On Janet Napolitano’s appointment
as head of Homeland Security
By Antonio Zavala
A lot of people on this list serv are asking what does it mean for Barack Obama
to have appointed Janet Napolitano as head of Homeland Security.
I believe that Napolitano’s appointment to this important post is a concession
Obama made to John McCain for McCain’s support on immigration matters later in
the administration.
Napolitano’s home state is the same as McCain’s and in politics this can’t be
said to be a coincidence. In politics everything is pre-figured.
As you recall, Obama met early on (some say too early considering the heat of
the presidential campaign) with McCain in Chicago.Supposedly, according to the
local media, to “get advice on how to run the country.”
With Napolitano’s appointment President-elect Obama wants to appease the Right
wing which is clamoring for border security, which Napolitano is strong on. At
the same time Obama wants to present Napolitano as a guardian of basic human
rights which will be difficult to do since Napolitano’s signature will be on
every deportation and raid that takes place in the country after Jan 20, 2009.
As to the rest of the country, some have Napolitano figured out for what she
is: a hardliner when it comes to border enforcement, albeit too strong, as she
is responsible for militarizing the Arizona border with Mexico. Her state,
under her administration (and remember she is a Democrat) has also passed some
of the harshest laws against immigrants.
Some left groups can well imagine Napolitano, as head of DHS, militarizng the
entire border with Mexico.
President elect Obama, a fairly new figure in national politics, has stated
that he wants to include opposing voices (rival voices, they call them, like
in Abraham Lincoln’s administrartion) so that he can get a fair amount of
dissenting opinions.
Yet no matter what name you give it, it is the same old game of appeasing
opposing forces so that he can get some support from the other side as he steps
into this historic occasion of being the first african-american in US history
to occupy the Oval Office.
President elect Obama may well silence the loud and brash Right in the country
but perhaps he won’t be able to silence the Left which will remind him at every
step of his administration about his promise of change.
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