Brooklyn, Stand Up: Napolitano to Helm Dept. of Homeland Security
So says Politico’s Mike Allen. As a native Brooklynite, I am obligated to throw my Roc sign in the air.
One quick note: this is a pretty strong indication that Eric Holder will get the Attorney General spot. Napolitano, who was Arizona’s first woman attorney general , was widely mentioned as an AG contender.
But the big question is why you would want to take this job. Fewer agencies are more of a mess than DHS, a Frankenstein-like agglutination of 170,000 federal employees from different bureaucratic and law-enforcement cultures, transformed into a hive of incompetence and cronyism under Bush. Appealing, no? Napolitano has a reputation for being a strong manager, however, as you can read in my friend Dana Goldstein’s recent profile of her in the American Prospect, and management skills are supposed to be paramount for making DHS function as it should.
These should be some interesting confirmation hearings — unfortunately chaired by Droopy — not least of which because I’d like to know what Napolitano makes of the spread of state-federal intelligence “fusion centers.” The ACLU has its concerns. Here’s what Napolitano told Dana in a different context:
“„When asked what she’d like to work on at the national level, Napolitano won’t name a specific position, but she makes a hard sell for her law-enforcement experience. “I think at this stage, what I bring is that I’ve been an attorney general,” she says. As U.S. attorney, Napolitano brags, her work on border-related crime forced her to make “big decisions that require judgment and attention.”
