Blogging will be less than thorough the next couple of days as I’m traveling (and in Chicago– a great chance to do "man on the street" interviews about Roland Burris). But one piece does deserve a mention today– a very critical look by the Washington Post on Barack Obama’s "one president at a time" mantra.

Reporter Michael D. Shear makes clear that when it comes to the economy Obama is willing to use his position as president-elect to do presidential things like propose a stimulus plan and cajole Congress into action. But when it comes to Israel airstrikes into Gaza, Obama doesn’t interrupt his Honolulu vacation and instead reminds everyone that George W. Bush is president and, for the next three weeks, it’s still a Bush administration problem.

This is definitely a fair point to be raised. But I’m not sure if we can necessarily impute hypocritical or manipulative motives to Obama. It actually does make some sense that the president-elect can be more forceful about his domestic policy, but defer to the one voice idea in the foreign policy arena. It would help, of course, if the country’s singular voice was a bit more respected and engaged in Middle East diplomacy than George W. Bush’s.-MB

A pretty amazing story: American soldiers in Iraq waiting for arrest warrants from Iraqi judges before detaining possible terror suspects.  Campbell Robertson of the New York Times reports from Baghdad about Americans anxious to detain people they know to be dangerous, and Iraqi police saying "’Why rush this?  Let’s get it right the first time so when we get this guy, let’s have enough to prosecute him.’"  It’s a refreshing thought as we approach the New Year and soon our sixth year in Iraq.  Maybe it is never too late to get something — let’s start with just one thing — right the first time. -NH

Ambitious Gas Drilling Projects Promise Revenue but Threaten Environment

By Jane Johnston

Newburgh, NY, December 30, 2008 – Ever heard of “fracking”? It could bring cash-strapped New York State revenue in the billions of dollars. It could also contaminate groundwater and aquifers with carcinogens and other toxins, pollute millions of gallons of water, and require New York City to build a water filtration plant at a cost of $10 billion. (more…)

For more than a decade, government officials at the Environmental Protection Agency exxagerated the results of cleanup efforts in the Chesapeake Bay, a formerly bountiful waterway that provided the mid-Atlantic region with plentiful crabs, oysters, and fish, according to a special report by David A. Fahrenthold in the Washington Post.  Fahrenthold learned from former EPA officials in charge of the bay cleanup effort that they were encouraged to hide the truth in order to maintain budget revenues.  Program manager William Matuszeski "repeatedly released data that exaggerated its success, hoping to influence Congress" and Rebecca W. Hanmer, who ran the Chesapeake Bay effort after Matuszeski, "was instructed by regional leaders in 2002 not to acknowledge that the effort would fall short of its 2010 goals."  Fahrenthold quotes Matuszeski:  "To protect appropriations you were getting, you had to show progress," Matuszeski said. "So I think we had to overstate our progress."  Telling the truth about this coverup is progress of a kind, but it’s more than a shame that Matuszeski and Hanmer waited until now to speak out.  And as for the "regional leaders" who helped the money flow when the work was not succeeding, let’s hope that Fahrenthold and others will keep digging and identify them.

Ned Hodgman

Last week I had somewhat of a fixation on the question of whether Republicans had an opinion about the recession. It didn’t seem party leaders were speaking much about it or had much to say about Barack Obama’s $700-800 billion economic stimulus proposal. So I guess it was heartening to see this morning that both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have pieces about the GOP "warning against overspending." It turns out that Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, isn’t opposed to stimulus per se. The Journal’s Naftali Bendavid reports that he doesn’t specifically object to tax cuts, aid to state governments, and funding for infrastructure, school construction, energy efficiency, broadband access and health-information technology.  He just doesn’t want spending on loathed pork-barrel projects.

So McConnell is against wasteful spending. I’m shocked this doesn’t bump Israel-Hamas from the front page. Even lacking constructive proposals, McConnell and the GOP can– and should– play a constructive role in scrutinizing each item in the stimulus package. Hopefully the scrutinizing won’t grind the proposal to a halt or take it in some aimless direction.-MB

The New York TImes’ John Schwartz has a really comprehensive piece laying out the challenges and controversies facing NASA heading into the Obama administration. The main issue is that after the Columbia shuttle exploded in 2003 the Bush administration gave the go ahead for the agency to embark on building a new system of spacecraft. Only this spacecraft can’t be ready until 2015. And funding to keep up the old spacecraft ends in 2010, meaning a five-year gap where astronauts will be borrowing Russian shuttles.

So the Bush administration gave NASA the green light for a forward-looking project. But at the same time the agency is somewhat in limbo and waiting for signals from Obama.

Again, Schwartz is good at explaining an issue that I know very little about. But he keeps cryptically referring to a "chorus of naysayers that has arisen online." Does a loyal Understanding Gov reader want to point me to the lively NASA blogging community?-MB

The Washington Post’s Maria Glod reports that Arne Duncan, Obama’s pick for education secretary and the current head of Chicago public schools, has made the Chicago schools a "laboratory for reform." In his seven years as chief executive of Chicago schools, Duncan has introduced performance pay for teachers and administrators based on how well students do on standardized tests. But he’s also pushed for an array for a lesser-known reform efforts like giving cash to students for good grades and proposing the creation of gay-friendly schools.

Glod portrays Duncan as a thoughtful reformer and seasoned negotiator with reform advocates, administrators and teacher’s unions. So he sounds like a good choice for education secretary. But I’m not sure if the Dept. of Education is the right platform for experimentation and improvisation. Duncan’s biggest impact policy-wise will probably be his role in No Child Left Behind re-authorization. Otherwise his role will not be as creator of new education initiatives but giving money and favorable regulations for innovative school districts.  Duncan, in other words, has to manage the bureaucracy to make the educational system safe for future Arne Duncan’s.-MB

Barack Obama has picked his cabinet and now all that’s left is for the Senate to confirm his choices. The Boston Globe’s Scott Helman reports that confirmation will be a formality– except for attorney general-designate Eric Holder. As I’ve written on, Holder, the deputy AG under Bill Clinton, played a prominent role in the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. We’ll get another blast from the Clinton administration’s past as GOP lawmakers also want probe Holder about his role in returning 6 year-old Elian Gonzales to Cuba. But with the Democratic caucus expected to hold a 59-41 Senate advantage, I doubt that Holder’s confirmation is in jeopardy.

What’s really interesting, I think, is that Holder is the only Clintonite who will face stern GOP questioning. Part of the reason is that some Clinton folks like Rahm Emanuel, Clinton Treasury Sec. Larry Summers and Clinton Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner took White House jobs that don’t require confirmation. But I think it partly speaks to the fact that even veteran Republicans have lost their appetite for the Clinton wars.  At one time GOP lawmakers would have reacted with glee to the prospect of grilling Hillary Clinton. Now they’ll settle for trying to draw blood from B-team Clintonite Holder.-MB

A New York Times editorial today distills the conventional left-center wisdom on whether Rep. Hilda Solis, a California Democrat, is the right choice to lead Barack Obama’s Labor Dept. On the one hand, Solis champions workplace rights and is a favorite of labor unions, a constituency otherwise marginalized in the Obama cabinet (none of his econ. advisers have ties to the labor community).  On the other hand, Solis is a household name only in a few households. Will she have the clout to get labor’s perspective into broad economic rescue plans? Will she be a powerful voice for the Employee Free Choice Act–which will make organizing workplaces vastly easier?

I hope Solis and the Labor Dept. have a voice in the big economic and legislative issues of the day. But the department needs to walk before it runs. This means a return to the duties Solis will need no outside help to accomplish: enforcing current workplace laws, overturning a Bush administration regulation to weaken overtime rules, and actually write a workplace safety regulation or two. The Times notes that Labor has issued exactly one new safety rule during the Bush administration. And as Ned cited, today’s Washington Post reports on an embarrassingly bad Occupational Safety and Health Administration where Bush political appointees silenced career officials.

If Solis can restore morale and a sense of purpose to the Labor Dept., working with lawmakers and Larry Summers will seem like a piece of cake.-MB

David Lazarus wrote in his Los Angeles Times column that advocates for a stronger Consumer Product Safety Commission and Food and Drug Administration are optimistic that the Barack Obama presidency "will mark the beginning of a new era in protecting people from stuff that can hurt you." The idea is that an Obama administration will give both agencies more money, counteract the influence of industry lobbyists and appoint leaders that actually believe in the agency’s missions. Lazarus reports that Pam Gilbert, the executive director for CPSC under the Bill Clinton administration, is rumored to be the next CPSC chairman. Who the next FDA commissioner will be seems more in doubt– candidates include Baltimore Health Dept. head Joshua Sharfstein and Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

Ideally, Obama will do more than throw more at each agency (though that would be nice, too) but understand that what’s involved in protecting consumers is totally different in 2008 than even 1998. Under the Bush administration, both agencies have deteriorated– and it’s a deterioration that coincided with the rapid rise of China as manufacturing superpower. It’s hardly an impossible task to regulate Chinese-made drugs and household products. But it is something the federal government has still not really devised a strategy for.-MB