For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All | Hacker News Reader

For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

nytimes.com

14 pointsfrisco35 comments

Hugely misleading title: the questionairre is for cabinet posts and senior staff. The positions they're talking about are Senate-confirmable: the Obama administration is asking for these details, but the Senate can subpoena for them.

I think it might be worth pointing out that this is only applicable to "those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts." It's not like every possible White House employee is being asked to hand over the keys to their online lives.

And the submission headline here is a little misleading: the questionnaire appears to focus on affiliations and past financial associations, not facebook pages and IRC logs.

The original NYTimes headline is much better: For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

That's pretty in depth. On one hand, the controversial stuff will be dug up by the media or someone else anyway, but on the other, it's asking quite a lot to hand over every bit of privacy you might have had.

It is intrusive. However, I think they are doing it to prevent any embarassing scandals. Be assured, journalists will (as they should BTW) do the same thing to you if you become a WH employee.

Curse you NYTimes and your annoying, intrusive password requirements and your bugmenot disabling.

heh completely unrelated, but our smartfilter is at the moment, for some reason, blocking the NYTimes as having a "malicious web reputation."

Spyware and popups aren't the only way to gain a reputation like that!

Try the BugMeNot plugin for Firefox. Then all you gotta do to get around NYTimes annoyance is right-click on the username field and say "log me in with BugMeNot"...

I use BugMetNot but NYT is getting more vigilant about disabling those passwords.

So apparently the change candidate wants to start by weeding out anyone who has ever spoken up against the status quo.

And the "no lobbyists on my staff" rule is out. New rule is "nobody who has lobbied in the last year"

My assumption would be that he just wants to know about it. If he rejects everyone out of hand who has skeletons, he won't be able to find people. I agree that the questionnaire's invasive, but it's not like many people are going to be rejected based on minor embarrassments.

Neither the article nor the policy mention anything about speaking up against the status quo. They appear instead to be looking for "conflicts of interest" and "possible sources of embarrassment."

There's a difference.

What do you take "possible sources of embarrassment" to mean in the context of one's personal diary or blog?

Racist comments, photos of you doing lines off a hooker's ass, getting "McCain 2008" tattooed on your forehead, etc...

Yes but I think he's already severed his connections with Reverend Wright.

My personal definition would be "anything you wouldn't be comfortable seeing splashed across the masthead of The Drudge Report."

The proposed National Parks Director writing a personal essay about why we should turn them into private game reserves? The proposed HUD director writing that HUD should fund plasma TVs in public housing?

So, basically, have you had any ideas you weren't supposed to have? (Or spoken up against the status quo, as I said originally.)

I'd think that speaking up against the status quo is fine, as long as your goals are in line with the new administration's goals. It would make no sense to appoint someone who wants to push an opposing agenda.

IIRC Lincoln did.

No, that's a gross oversimplification. Re-read Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lincoln appointed his political rivals in the Republican Party to his cabinet. He did not appoint secessionists. And his strategy was imperfect: despite his immense political talents, he was still hurt by defectors and infighting.

On the other hand, slipshod vetting damaged two recent political figures: Clinton's cabinet nominations in '92, and McCain's selection of Palin this year.

Obama was elected to do a job. You may want him to do some other job, like uniting the political parties or greating a great National Salon so we can debate libertarianism and socialism and economics rationally. That's not the job he's undertaken now.

Wasn't one of Clinton's picks given flak for having written something saying that kids should be taught about masturbation as part of the school sex ed curriculum? It seems to me that that's actually the perfect example of filtering out people who have spoken up against the status quo.

Donna Shalala. Yes. But even if I agree that that's a perfectly reasonable thing to discuss in the public record, I can still concede that the administration shouldn't waste time picking fights with the ~15MM people (and their ~100 elected representatives) that have a huge problem with that.

And it's all relative. If Warren Buffet wrote an article about teaching masturbation in a sex ed curricula, they'd still put him up for Sec T. If you're someone with no name recognition going up for a post that's not a top priority and there are 20 other reasonable candidates for the spot, your outre positions are going to be more of an issue.

This all seems reasonable to me. I don't expect Obama to suspend thermodynamics; nothing's going to be 100% efficient, and I want health care fixed more than I want to watch epic media debates.

I agree with what you're saying, but realize that the same thing can be good on one level but bad on another level. For example, reading social news sites might be bad for my personal productivity. But at the same time, an almost limitless amount of waste could be eliminated from society if only people spent more time reading (non-fiction) books and discussing current events.

Similarly, I realize that Obama has only a limited amount of political capital and it's easy to waste it by backing controversial issues that ultimately amount to nothing anyway. But at the same time, how many of our problems in society come from the lack of intellectual integrity? Maybe bringing intellectual integrity to Washington isn't enough to fix everything from the economy to health care, but it would sure as hell ameliorate the problems.

Now it's perfectly reasonable to say this isn't the appropriate time to reform sex ed. But to say anyone who has ever even thought about the issue is unfit to serve the country, that might save political capital on one level but I do worry that we're digging ourselves into an even deeper hole in the long run.

I too would like to suspend thermodynamics, because I have some awesome ideas for perpetual motion machines. I would also like my grilled cheese sandwiches to fly. But you started this discussion by implying Obama was a hypocrite for wanting to vet cabinet-level nominees, and you should concede that you were wrong to do so.

Speaking of intellectual integrity, I never said anything implying Obama should not vet candidates. I disagree with one specific part of the vetting process, that candidates should be required to out themselves for having ever entertained any "potentially embarrassing" ideas.

If I am correct you hold the view that the best way to effect positive change in society is to maximize the political capital of our leaders by selecting candidates who have never had any original ideas or held any controversial positions. (And I add original ideas, since most new ideas are controversial.) However, I don't believe this is true. I believe that candidates who are intellectually curious and have intellectual integrity are the best leaders to effect change in society, since even if the public does not initially agree with all of their ideas these leaders will be in a stronger position to convince them. While I value your opinion, you have not convinced me that it is indeed correct, and so I see no reason to concede.

Now you're just dancing around. Your comment is right there at the top of the thread. All you're convincing me of now is that you'll never concede anything in a discussion, which makes you pretty boring to talk to.

Some other time, maybe, Alex.

I think I understand what you're saying. To clarify, my point was not that Obama is a hypocrite, but rather that I disagree with his policy of having candidates out themselves for having held potentially embarrassing ideas. That's what I was trying to express when I said "So apparently the change candidate wants to start by weeding out anyone who has ever spoken up against the status quo."

You continue to imply a lot of things that aren't justified by evidence. Asking about potential embarassments isn't the same thing as rejecting candidates for them.

Fair enough.

Sorry for assuming you were unreasonable. Rough morning.

"Have you published or disclosed any personal ideas that would prevent you from being confirmed, or that would cause your confirmation to be disruptive for an administration that needs to pull off an unprecedented economic turnaround and pass a sweeping health care reform? Yes? Then maybe we don't need you as Parks Director so much right now.

I believe "possible sources of embarrassment" is about limiting one's susceptibility to blackmail. Pretty standard for security clearances.

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