 Herbert Hoover was the longest serving Commerce Secretary before being elected president.
May 31st, 2011
01:08 PM ET
Did you know? Fun facts on Commerce The first Sectary of Commerce was William C. Redfield in 1913, a magnate of the Iron and Steel industry and author of the book, “The New Industrial Day.” The longest serving Commerce Secretary was Herbert Hoover, who oversaw the Department in the pre-Great Depression boom years of 1921-1928. Hoover went on to become President of the United States in 1929. The first woman Commerce Secretary was Juanita Kreps, who served from 1977-1979. The first African American Commerce Secretary was Ronald Brown, who served from 1993-1996. Brown was killed in a plane crash in 1996. Source: Commerce Department |
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DKL, I think both you and I agreed that McCain's biegsgt problem was having no economic plan or idea. If you recall I thought if anything you underestimated this. However that has always been true of McCain and was one of the many negatives he faced when winning the nomination. So I'm sticking to my guns that what is remarkable is how well McCain managed to do despite all the negatives he faced. Once the #1 issue became the issue he was weakest on, the economy, it was all over. (And I was saying that in mid-September)Regarding intellectuals among the Republicans I found very few of any age that liked Palin outside of social conservatives. It is true that older (over 30) people hated her much more. But it's hard for me to get a quantitate figure beyond simply noting that there was a lot. Now of course many of those people were also quite upset at McCain as an economic conservative. So you had people like Mickey Edwards the founder of the Heritage Foundation breaking from you for Obama something is seriously wrong with the ticket. But how much of that is due to McCain and how much to Palin I can't say. I can say quite objectively that the real commotion started in mid-September with many finding Palin to be the final straw. It simply wasn't, as you suggest a small number. But my main point is that if you piss off your main intellectual core something is deeply wrong.The money issue on Palin is a good one I wasn't addressing. I do agree that Palin brought in money. I don't think that is sufficient to be the best thing he did. Also note that when making that calculation one has to consider what would have happened to fund raising had, instead of Palin, he'd brought in Pawlenty, Romney, Jindal, or even Huckabee?