File this Under: Not a Good Idea

I think it would behoove anyone in the Obama Administration to read Frank Rich’s article in last Sunday’s New York Times, “Slumdog’s Unite!“.

That being said, MSNBC’s First Read is reporting that Harold Ford, Jr. is being touted by some Democrats as a possible Commerce Secretary. But it may raise more questions than needed:

There is one, potential, gigantic problem: Ford’s current place of employment — Merrill Lynch. Given the current views of Wall Street, Ford’s nomination could come under immediate fire and he’d have to disclose exactly what his job was with ML etc. and whether he was one of the 700 million dollar bonus recipients before Merrill completed its sale to Bank of America in late 2008.

There is a very real and very frustrated anger in the American public right now regarding what is being done by the powers that be (both in public and private life).

Obama rode into Washington on a wave of this growing mood. He raised a lot of people’s hopes that things can be different. He should be (and I believe he is) smart enough to take heed of Mr. Rich’s advice:

Americans have had enough of such arrogance, whether in the public or private sectors, whether Democrat or Republican. Voters turned on Sarah Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her claims of being a regular hockey mom were contradicted by her Evita shopping sprees. John McCain’s sanctification of Joe the Plumber (himself a tax delinquent) never could be squared with his inability to remember how many houses he owned. A graphic act of entitlement also stripped naked that faux populist John Edwards.