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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 2, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Editorial: Clinton drops the other shoe

It is a general rule of Washington administrations that the closer to the levers of political and economic power, the more likely a member or loyal servant of the old capitalist establishment is in charge.

This was obvious in the Reagan and Bush administrations, which filled their top positions with executives from the banking, industrial and military establishments. They were uniformly rich white males, usually of Anglo-Saxon heritage.

After his first election, Clinton promised to make the cabinet "look like America." This meant more diversity-at least in appearance. Some Black and Latino people, some women, were appointed. One post with economic clout-Secretary of Commerce-went to African American Ron Brown.

The racists in the Senate and the board rooms hated Brown despite his overall loyalty to U.S. big business. They just couldn't stand having a Black man in a position where he could exert his influence. They didn't mourn when Brown died in a plane crash while flying to the Balkans.

Clinton's appointments to his cabinet for his second term are in. There are no surprises. Many were active in his first administration. They are, if anything, even more to the right than his first cabinet, especially in the more powerful positions associated with state power and administration of the capitalist economy-State, Defense, Treasury, Justice, Commerce and Agriculture.

Of the 14 cabinet posts, three went to African Americans. These included Alexis Herman at Labor, Rodney Slater at Transportation and Jesse Brown at Veterans Affairs. Under current conditions, these jobs consist respectively of explaining to unionists why the administration won't help them, reducing subsidies to mass transportation and cutting services to veterans.

The one Latino in the new cabinet, Francisco Peña, moved from Transportation to Energy. As the Dec. 21 New York Times article so succinctly put it, he is going "from one sprawling, cash-strapped bureaucracy trying to downsize ... to another." Like the new appointees above, his role is to cut spending and benefits, not to spread the spoils of power.

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