Obama loses another cabinet nominee

Friday, February 13. Is the post of Commerce Secretary in President Obama's first administration jinxed? Judd Gregg (pictured), the Republican senator for New Hampshire who Barack Obama finally settled on to replace his previous pick, Bill Richardson, has suddenly pulled out citing "policy differences" with the Democratic White House.

Earlier this month, Gregg had pledged to "embrace" Obama's agenda. But in a statement issued yesterday he claimed to have found there were "irresolvable conflicts" on issues including Obama's economic stimulus package and the country's census. "We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy," he said.

What is galling for Obama is that Gregg apparently offered himself for the Commerce post, in the knowledge that the new president was keen to "reach out across the aisle" and appoint Republicans to his administration.

A White House statement said: "He was very clear throughout the interviewing process that despite past disagreements about policies, he would support, embrace, and move forward with the president's agenda," the statement said. We regret that he has had a change of heart."

Obama himself could only say: "This is something of a surprise."

Gregg's volte face comes two months after Richardson, the New Mexico Governor, pulled out because of an investigation into the awarding of state contracts to campaign donors.

At the time, it was widely reported that Richardson had not been Obama's first choice: the post had already been turned down in November by Penny Pritzker, the 49-year-old Hyatt hotel heiress who ran Obama's presidential campaign fund. She was, in effect, too rich to take the job: she was unable to disentangle herself from her vast financial holdings in order to meet the strict standards of service required by the new President.

For the Guardian, Michael Tomasky thinks Gregg was probably under pressure from his local press in New Hampshire as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill. "If you want to get really local, I would imagine the folks down the hall – by which I mean his fellow Republican senators – were engaging in a little ridicule of their own," says Tomasky. "Or not so much ridicule. Maybe something more like: What the f*** are you thinking? And I don't listen to those [GOP] lunatics on the AM radio dial, but I'd imagine they were saying much the same thing."

On the Huffington Post, Drew Westen says that Obama's keenness to select a Republican commerce secretary (having already kept Robert Gates as defence secretary) reveals a worrying Democratic concern. "The administration sent out an unintended meta-message to voters," he says, "you can trust us Democrats on a lot of things, but when it comes to defence and commerce, let's bring in the Republicans, because they really know something about keeping us safe and prosperous."

FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 13, 2009