Obama has picked a science team. One may wonder what priorities an Obama administration would have, and one way to decipher those priorities is by looking at his top picks.
For example, Obama’s top foreign policy advisors are somewhat telling of his priorities
-- Susan Rice, a former Assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She has pushed hard for a tougher response to the Darfur crisis in Africa --Anthony Lake, national security advisor to Clinton. Mr. Lake is noted for his open criticism of the Clinton admin for failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda.
These headliners on his foreign policy team give us an idea of which part of the globe Mr. Obama might place heavy focus on during his admin, for better or worse.
Obama’s Science team is also somewhat telling. One pick is an expert on malaria, another is committed to improving health in the developing world and sharing western science information with the
developing world , another is an expert in crop development and former member of Monsanto’s Board of Directors (Monsanto is a leader in agricultural biotech that will aid crops in developing countries), another has argued against the privatization of commercial space flight, and another is a vocal critic of creationism (as anyone with a thinking brain should be, we say!), another a Nobel “laureate who used his prize money to defend academic freedom against the war on terror” which presumably translates into less restricted visas for foreign scientists coming into the U.S.
Now I like all the folks on the team and applaud their work. But I also know that Clinton waited until he was out of office to focus on his mission to improve global health. My question is one of balance. How much should a sitting president focus on humanitarian concerns to other countries and how much should he focus on the national interests of the U.S. And of course those are not mutually exclusive, but there will be many times when a president must put the concerns of his country above those of other countries…one reason few want the job-- hard choices must often be made to put the U.S. as the #one priority even when that is a very difficult stand to make.
What I have seen thus far of Obama is a man so internally polarized that I do not find him mentally ready to take the stands that may well need to be taken.
(Click on the title of the post to read the full article)
LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.
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