I didn’t read if anyone else was following this theme I’m about to expound on, but both candidate mentioned in the title, are facing considerable controversy over their picks to their own cabinets…

I so much want to revive the old joke here, of how much easier a time Bill Lee would have had, since we already know prominent positions in his cabinet would be held by Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and Johnny Walker…. but such old jokes belong in state daily newspapers….. New and exciting jokes belong on blogs, so I will refrain at this time from even mentioning it….

But the blogs are screaming about both chief of staff picks…. Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Rochford….

We all need to calm down…

There are a couple of things to remember…

A. We elected these executives to lead.
B. We elected these executives to lead by doing something different.
C. We elected these executives to lead by doing something different so change would occur….

Both candidates are doing just that… Now I don’t know how many of you have ever put together a staff… But putting a staff together is ….. let’s stretch here… sort of like trying to get through a Thanksgiving Dinner among family that likes to argue with each other a lot….. It’s gathering a lot of individuals, each with their personal individual agenda, and getting them to subjugate their personal self aggrandizement, so that the team can accomplish its goal… Therefore above all,….one needs to be inspiring….

Second, just keeping the team together and focused on the daily running of the executive branch…requires someone with immaculate attention to detail…. The President or Governor HAS NO TIME FOR DEALING WITH DETAIL…. He needs to leave that to someone he can trust to carry it out…. And usually people who are that anal to the core…. aren’t very socially inclined, and often have legitimately over the course of their lifetimes… earned their real names of asshole, dickhead, bastard, and son of a bitch…… Duh? It’s a fact of life… The real question is whether or not these office comptrollers can hire and fire, cultivate and motivate, organize and efficiently direct members of their staff, so that the team works to make “change” happen…

Third.. The chief of staff needs to be loyal to the Executive… His job is to protect the executive at all times, so that executive has time to think, solicit advice, and make important decisions.. It requires a large amount of trust between these two people…. Direct communication, especially when it is negative, needs to flow back and forth between the two partners….There can be no breakdown in communication.

So bottom line…. if the executive himself feels most comfortable with that person he chooses…. who are we to even dare think our opinion matters? That comfort level is of prime importance.

So Executives: Pick your staffs to the best of your ability and listen not to the rumors milling around those politico’s who are bored silly now that the election is over…. If you truly want to silence them, interview some of them for a position… They will soon realize that their complaints were made in error after they understand the scope and responsibilities of the new position….

Remember, it’s change we want….As long as your staff, whoever they may be, will provide that commodity…. it will all work out….

One must remember… whether listening to WDEL, reading the News Journal, or even scrolling through blogs, that without an election, all these sources scrutinizing the picks….are scrambling for any type of controversial subject to keep and hold those patrons who swelled their ranks during the campaigns….. So in the end they will wail; it will be to no avail….

Bottom line: whether the reader lives twenty-five, fifty-five, or even seventy-five more years…. looking back they will never remember who was in the cabinet and worked to make it happen… The only thing that matters when one looks back from that perspective…is whether things got better….or worse. That…. we will remember…..

Bottom line, these controversies are just like the yearly NFL draft…. a lot of hot air over nothing……. No one is talking about it by September, and it is completely forgotten by the first Sunday in February……

Just pick good people who will win for us, and forget about what ANYONE else is saying….

Just do it.