An item in this article incorrectly described the military service of W. Scott Gould, who was nominated by President Obama as deputy secretary of veterans affairs. Gould was a naval reservist who worked on intelligence for the war in Afghanistan; he did not serve in Iraq.
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Is Eric Holder One of Those People Who Need People?
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The longer the battle continues, the more the odds may tip to Herbert. Each day, the administration is going to find things to ask Reid's help on, and Reid, by coincidence, might find it opportune to ask how his pal Herbert is doing with that FAA job.
USDA Choices
It's official: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, has tapped a veteran political operative from his home state to become his chief of staff at the sprawling federal bureaucracy. John Norris was Vilsack's first gubernatorial chief of staff and later managed Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign in Iowa. His wife, Jackie Norris, just began work at the White House as first lady Michelle Obama's chief of staff.
Vilsack also named Carole Jett as deputy chief of staff. A three-decade veteran of the federal service, Jett worked on the Obama campaign in Indiana and helped lead the transition team's agency review group at the Agriculture Department.
Meanwhile, at VA
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki, a retired four-star Army general, appears to be stacking his sub-Cabinet with fellow veterans. We're hearing buzz that Shinseki will name W. Scott Gould, who served in Iraq as a naval intelligence reservist, as his deputy secretary. Gould, a former assistant secretary of commerce who once served in the Clinton White House, is a vice president at IBM Global Business Services.
Meanwhile, Shinseki is eyeing disabled Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth as assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs. Duckworth, whom Obama had considered for the top VA post, currently runs the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. A former congressional candidate, Duckworth had been mentioned as a candidate for the Senate seat Obama vacated. After losing both her legs in combat, Duckworth was an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq war policy.
Sources say Shinseki also could tap Roger Baker, who served on Obama's transition team and is a longtime information technology executive in government and private industry, for a top VA post, perhaps as chief innovation officer.
Diversity Watch
For the die-heard bean counters, as of 4 p.m. yesterday, the Obama White House, in its first week in office, announced a total of 42 nominees for Senate-confirmed administration positions, according to data compiled by the New York University Wagner School for Public Service. Of those, 34 were officially nominated and the Senate confirmed 14 of them.
It's a minuscule number of the more than 550 jobs we're tracking, but it includes a substantial number of the most senior people in the administration. Two-thirds of the announced nominees were men. Thirty of the total (71 percent) were white. Of the dozen remaining, six were African American, four were Latinos and two were Asian American.
With Philip Rucker
