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Pop Goes the Nominee

John Norris explains why trial ballooning top cabinet appointees, such as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, is such a bad idea.

The Washington parlor game of taking umbrage with presidential appointments has been refined to an art form in recent days. Everyone from Rosa Brooks in these pages to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times has complained that the president’s team is too old, too white, too male, too much resembling a California Raisin.

Let’s be clear; Most of the Obama administration’s wounds are self-inflicted. Why it rushed to roll out white, male appointees ahead of all others is something of a mystery, and will make the appointment of highly qualified women and minorities look as if the White House is engaging in damage control. But having appointed more than 40 percent of women to political slots, the administration is not quite the boys’ club that Fox News and others are now bemoaning.

The above excerpt was originally published in Foreign Policy. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

John Norris

Senior Fellow; Executive Director, Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative

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