Salazar would continue Obama moderate appointments

The news that president-elect Barack Obama has put Colorado U.S. Rep. John Salazar on the short list for Secretary of Agriculture continues a trend of much more moderate appointments to the posts in his budding administration that we have had any reason to expect.

They're all liberal Democrats, of course, but not from the left-most perch of the Democratic Party. The foreign policy team of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House Foreign Affairs advisor Gen. James Jones,and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are all relative hardliners on terrorism, Israel and the United States position in the world. Jones, a former commandant in the Marine Corps who turned down a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offer from President Bush because of his policy disagreements with then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is far more conservative than such previous Democratic holders of the post like Sandy Berger in the Clinton administration or Zbigniew Brezinski in the Carter regime.

In some circles (certainly not mine) the Salazar family are considered political wunderkinds in Colorado. Ken Salazar is the senior U.S. Senator from the state and a former Attorney General. He won each of his races after a divisive, bruising Republican primary election for the post, and therefore was elected by modest margins as a result. His brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, represents the heavily GOP western slope district of Colorado.

He got elected as a successor to moderate GOP Rep. Scott McGinnis after the former went to the mat for his brother-in-law in the primary, who lost. With the moderate Republicans sitting on their hands in the general election, Salazar squeaked to victory, and with a Republican district to defend, has been a very moderate Democrat, voting much as McGinnis did before him.

John is certainly the more conservative of the Salazar brothers, and as a working potato farmer and rancher, qualified to be USDA Secretary. Obama is looking for more Hispanics for his cabinet, and Salazar would certainly be a far better one than we Republicans could have expected. Both Salazars have the maddening propensity to vote conservative on "no-hoper" issues like the flag burning amendment and liberal on the important stuff, and then claiming to be moderates.

Ken Salazar is up for re-election in 2010, so we can expect his votes for the next two years to inch to the middle, as Rep. Mark Udall of the Citizens Republic of Boulder, certainly did in getting elected to the Senate this year, replacing U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard.

John Salazar has voted a relatively conservative line on natural resource, grazing, water rights and other ag issues, so could be a far more friendly USDA Secretary than we might have expected. He is also from the West, which would be a big help, as opposed to a southern cotton, peanut or tobacco farmer, or midwestern corn farmer.

He'd sure have my vote, for what little that's worth.