Tim Kaine to Head DNC
By Brad Porter | Related entries in NewsSo reports MSNBC.
It is traditionally the President’s call as to who will lead the party organization, and Obama has tapped Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. Kaine will work part-time until his term is up in 2010, at which point he’ll take over full-time. Howard Dean steps down January 21st, and those are some mighty big shoes to fill.
DNC (or RNC) chair can be relatively important or relatively unimportant, depending on the context of the party at the time and how up to the job the chairman is. During Howard Dean’s tenure, it turned out to be hugely important—-I would argue that Dean is one of the most significant political figures of this decade, behind perhaps only Bush, Cheney, and Obama (and indeed, I will argue that in a later post), at least on par with Newt Gingrich in the 90s and Pat Robertson in the 80s.
Kaine will likely be little more than Obama’s representative within the party structure, which is of course fine. But smart Democrats ought to be sending Dean off with a 21-gun salute. One need only compare Dean to his predecessor, who is also stomping around Virginia of late, to see the difference between what the chairman is normally like, and what a truly inspired chairmanship can look like.
Here’s hoping Kaine falls at least somewhere in the middle (which I suspect he will).
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 4th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
If Dean was any kind of significant political figure he would have been tossed a bone by Mr. Obama. Or there was something that came out during the vetting process that precluded a position. If he gets a 21 gun salute I hope one wings him. There no room for racist in an Obama administration. Google Dean and Abenaki. Guy deserves what Cheneys hunting buddy got.