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DEL.ICIO.USNunn: ‘Not interested’ in a spot in an Obama cabinet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn held a press conference in the downtown Atlanta law offices of King & Spalding on Wednesday. The obvious question was whether he would be serving in a Barack Obama administration, should it come to pass next week.
Nunn was in Virginia with the Democratic presidential candidate last week, and said Obama had made clear that he wouldn’t make any early decisions that presumed victory.
But for himself, Nunn gave an unsurprising answer:
“I’m not interested in going back into government. I’m happy in the private sector, and I’m confident this is where I’m going to stay. But I will be happy to help him, if he asks me, in some sort of advisory capacity. But I have no interest in going back into government.”
But Nunn’s other stray thoughts were more compelling. First, the 70-year-old former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the next president’s first priority would be the economic crisis — which he said defies any strict ideological approach:
”Nobody knows precisely what the answer is today. There’s not any magic formula sitting there waiting. There’s not any magic philosophical position that addresses these financial problems we have. We haven’t been in this territory before.”
It was, he reminded all, the current Republican administration that has introduced the nationalization of banks into the rescue formula.
Nunn said he thought Obama, whom he endorsed this spring, had a chance to carry Georgia, which he said was being transformed from a red to a “purple” state. He said this about the Obama strategy:
”This is one of the most confident campaigns that we have seen in the history of this country. From a financial point of view and from an organizational point of view.
“The Internet has sent us back to the future. When I was campaigning, we had to have headquarters in counties all over Georgia. Guess what? We’re back to that day now. We went through a whole period of time when we said everything was on television or radio. No longer. They’ve have organized campaign headquarters all over Georgia.”
Finally, Nunn got into his decision to back Obama over Republican John McCain. He came within a hair of the territory that retired general Wesley Clark entered earlier this year:
“Senator McCain’s got a lot of experience. And as I’ve said, he’s a strong and courageous individual. I think it comes down to judgment. I’ve seen people that have had tremendous military experience that I really wouldn’t want to be president of the United States. But they deserve all sorts of medals for their military service.
“So Senator McCain has got a lot of experience, but when you look at the two of them on debate[s], when you are basically around them a good bit, and you see which one would have the better judgment, which one would be calmer and cooler and more collected when there’s a real crisis, I come down on Senator Obama’s side on that.”
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Comments
By rrual
October 30, 2008 2:57 PM | Link to this
I don’t know how much his endorsement of Doug Heckman will do, but if he were to endorse Bobby Saxon, it may give aaxon a huge lift for the 10th seat on tuesday.