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KLEIN ACCOUNTABILITY WATCH.
I was pretty hard on the idea of Tom Vilsack as Agricultural Secretary. Former governor of the corn state, and longtime supporter of corn subsidies, did not strike me as the appropriate resume. But Tom Philpott, Grist's food writer, says:
Even in this era of "change," it seems like you generally need to have proven your fealty to GMOs and corn-based ethanol to win serious consideration as USDA chief. Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, who briefly vied for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007, is emerging as a front-runner. Vilsack hews tightly to the biotech-industry party line; and he hotly promoted corn-based ethanol while governor. On the other hand, none other than Grist's own David Roberts declared his energy plan during last year's Democratic primaries the "ballsiest and most detailed any candidate from either party has offered." And Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition told me that Big Ag commodity groups had mounted a backroom campaign against Vilsack's bid for USDA chief. Evidently, the former governor is more of a champion of conservation programs than they can tolerate.That's not the same as saying Vilsack is a great choice, but it may indeed be that he's better than some of the alternatives. And as some correspondents noted, he is a serious policy wonk, and if his food subsidy policy has been weak, his energy policy has been notably forward-looking, and so it's possible he could come around. One thing you're seeing here is the immaturity of the food movement. Until the last year or two, most folks who specialized in agriculture did it from the perspective of industry, or culinary concerns, or GMO worries. Only as global warming has become more salient has food policy emerged as a broader issue, the sort that could grab the interest of young politicians and agency administrators. But it's all new enough that we don't really know who those folks are, and so it's hard for people to find good candidates to rally around. The fact that there was a petition going around to name Michael Pollan Ag Secretary sort of proves the point: Right now, the movement has ideas and advocates, but few converts who are credible on the cabinet level.There are certainly more egregious names on the short list than Vilsack. Last week, Pennsylvania ag secretary Dennis Wolff emerged as a contender. Wolff is notorious for unilaterally trying to prevent his state's dairy farmers for labeling their milk rBGH-free. Former Texas congressman and Big Ag lobbyist Charles Stenholm is another profoundly depressing name.
That said, there are some other names out there. Philpott continues:
One name I'm intrigued by is John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd helped lead the fight to hold USDA accountable for its long history of stiffing black farmers; his nomination is being championed by the Congressional Black Caucus. Virginia-based Boyd himself runs a relatively small-scale farm; seems like his position as a USDA outsider might lead him to champion the interests of small farmers in an agency that's long been beholden to large industrial operations.I'm a fan of non-traditional picks for offices like this one, if only because they don't have quite the same legacy of longtime ties to industry. That doesn't mean Boyd would be a good choice, but he's an interesting candidate.
COMMENTS (7)
John Boyd also ran a (very) unsuccessful campaign against Rep. Virgil Goode in 2000. (Goode is the former Dem turned Republican who maintained 2-to-1 margins until this election, where he seems to have lost in a squeaker.)
Posted by: Other Ezra | November 20, 2008 7:09 PM
Learning to run a huge distributed bureaucrisy isn't a feature of family farmers, and those who can think/act on broadband policy are all paid by some corp-ag company or another.
This must be impossible problem day (education, ag). Ezra might as well add the military/industrial complex to the agenda. Or coal/petro dependence?
Incidentally, (or connected?), has any developed country an ag policy that isn't beholden to its nation's farmers?
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | November 20, 2008 7:19 PM
I like this as edited
"the immaturity of the food movement ... GMO worries."
GMOs have been around for a while now. What are the undesirable consequences so far ? Why is your correspondent so convinced that only interest group politics could convince Vilsack that GMOs are OK ?
Posted by: Robert Waldmann | November 20, 2008 11:12 PM
Robert: So far we've seen correlations between GMOs and degraded insect life-cycles and other systemic food-chain effects.
Alas, we don't have good data on this, because GMOs have been approved as safe and so very little government funding is "wasted" on analysing their effects on the environment.
We might actually get some science funded if people who purport to have a scientific mindset would stop sneering at opposition to GMOs as pure Luddism.
Posted by: Meh | November 21, 2008 5:51 AM
Mark Ritchie would be a great candidate.
Posted by: piglet | November 21, 2008 11:03 AM
I've seen mention of Mark Ritchie too, and Jim Hightower.
Also Tom Harkin.
Posted by: Anonymous | November 21, 2008 2:00 PM
Hmm. I don't purport to have the last word on this, but when I worked at USDA, Boyd was regarded as a Sharpton-esque gadfly and a doctrinaire agitator. He browbeat good people who were trying in good faith to solve an intractable problem. Not at all a change from within guy, he seemed to care very little about the Department as an institution.
Now perhaps that's just my perspective as a Clinton political appointee. But I'm pretty sure Boyd has engendered ill will throughout the USDA bureaucracy for many years among partisans of all (both) stripes. Would be most unwise and untenable. Most unlikely to happen.
Posted by: Easy as ABC | November 21, 2008 4:07 PM