Cabinet secretaries, beware. You arrived in Washington with, by definition, a good reputation as a businessman, governor, mayor or academic. A Cabinet job, you thought, could only enhance your renown.
That was the case with former defense secretary Bob Gates, and— if he lasts another year — with current Pentagon chief Leon Panetta.
But in recent years, the odds that you may leave this town in obscurity or even ignominy seem to have increased dramatically.
The latest example is President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner and justly famous physicist. Now he’s battling allegations of presiding over hugely wasteful grants to now-bankrupt Solyndra and two other firms — and, the agency inspector general reported Monday, to an electric-transmission-line project.
Colin Powell, a four-star general and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, was secretary of state under George W. Bush. But, as Powell has lamented, his obituaries may well lead with his U.N. speech that helped persuade the country to go to war in Iraq.
Henry Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development under Bill Clinton, left town under a cloud after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about payments he’d made to his mistress.
Paul O’Neill, the highly regarded former head of Alcoa, was bounced by Bush II.
Donald Rumsfeld left the defense secretary’s job on a high note in 1977 to make a bundle in the private sector. The redux? Not such a high note.
A few officials — such as former HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo, now the governor of New York — have moved up. But others seem to have returned home to relative obscurity. It’s hard to even remember who they were.
Remember Clinton’s commerce secretary? William Daley? What ever happened to him? Oh, yeah . . .
If the walls could talk
Herman Cain’s on-the-record accuser, Sharon Bialek, unveiled her allegation of unwanted sexual advances by the Republican presidential contender in a curious venue: a room at the Friars Club in Manhattan.
Bialek’s attorney, Gloria Allred, had, after all, sued the club years ago for sex discrimination on behalf of a woman who’d been denied membership. The club is renowned as a place where famous show-business folks have roasted one another for years.
And the news conference was not in just any room, but the famous Milton Berle Room, named for the legendary comic and host of NBC’s “Texaco Star Theater” in the late 1940s and early 1950s. If anything, the room is even more famous this week.
If you act quickly, you’ll have a great opportunity to lunch in the room where a bit of political history was made. Yes, for a “suggested donation” of $500, $1,000 or $2,500, you can have lunch Monday in Uncle Miltie’s room at a fundraiser for Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).
West’s district includes Broward County, which we always thought of as Jackie Gleason territory, but maybe Berle won’t mind. Unclear whether lunch will include a quartet to perform the signature opening song for the show, a la the “Texaco singers”:
Oh, we’re the men of Texaco
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