Cabinet picks throw wrench into message

Cabinet members are going rogue on President Obama, making policy pronouncements before clearing them with the White House and giving the administration a new kind of headache.

The president experienced several problems filling his top bench of advisers, but now he’s having trouble with those members who have already been confirmed.

In the short time Obama has been in office, his administration has faced a number of questions about statements made by Cabinet officials that seemed to contradict his policies or put the White House in an awkward position.

One of the more recent examples happened last week when Attorney General Eric Holder said that the president would seek to reinstate the assault-weapons ban, an assertion that surely sent chills up the spines of Blue Dog Democrats and checks pouring in to the National Rifle Association.

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder said, according to ABC News.

The White House immediately referred follow-up questions to the Justice Department, but the pronouncement was quickly tamped down by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said no when asked if she had discussed the issue with the administration.

“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” Pelosi said last week. “I think it’s clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.”

Despite this and other examples of high-ranking administration officials who seem to be going rogue on various policy positions, the White House said Monday that the president has the “highest confidence” in the Cabinet he has put in place.

“The president has the highest confidence in the highly credentialed, bipartisan Cabinet he has assembled to devise and implement the policies that he believes will put our people back to work, get our economy back on track and keep our citizens safe,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s suggestion that the federal government consider a tax on drivers’ mileage drew a quick dismissal from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, who in turn was rebuked by a congressman.

After LaHood told The Associated Press that a mileage tax is something the administration “should look at,” Gibbs said at his daily briefing that a mileage tax “is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

Gibbs’s contradiction of LaHood, one of the few Republicans in the Obama administration, prompted Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) to tell Congressional Quarterly that LaHood should not “get slapped down by know-nothings.”

“I’ve got news for you, transportation policy isn’t going to be written in the press room of the White House,” Oberstar told CQ.

CIA Director Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have also drawn the ire of some in recent days, though their statements did not draw any pushback from the White House.

Panetta’s statement that the global economic crisis could lead to instability in Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela led Argentina Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana to call the former congressman and White House chief of staff’s remarks “unfounded and irresponsible, especially from an agency that has a sad history of meddling in the affairs of countries in the region,” according to Reuters.

And Clinton, the former senator and presidential contender, drew angry responses from some Jewish leaders when she criticized Israel for dragging its feet on delivering aid to Gaza.

Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University and an expert on the presidency, said such missteps are not uncommon historically, and “harmony … takes practice.”

“It’s understandable that it would be more prevalent in a new administration,” Baker said. “You’ve got people who are gathered in this chorus who have been singing by themselves for a long time.”
He added: “In some of these cases, they might not even know what the policy is.”

While Baker noted that “it’s fairly common” to have miscommunication between the agencies and the White House, more often than not it’s handled with a retraction.

“If it’s something really egregious, the chief of staff sort of takes them to the woodshed,” Baker said. “In a lesser case, they tend to just back off and say, ‘I misspoke.’ ”