It's rare that I ever praise Barack Obama but I do have to say that his apparent decision to appoint my former mayor, Ron Kirk, as U.S. Trade Represenative is a sound one.
As mayor of Dallas, Kirk was an insider through-and-through and he had a reputation for being a bit of a bully but he managed to get things done. If you know anything about the state of municipal politics in Dallas, then you know just what a huge accomplishment that was. Dallas is a city that sometimes seems to take a perverse pride in just how ineffective it's leaders are. Kirk, however, was an effective mayor and he'll probably be an effective Trade Rep.
At the risk of extending a backhanded compliment, Ron Kirk is someone who belongs in government and Obama is to be applauded for putting him there. That doesn't mean that I agree with many of the trade policies that Obama appears to be planning on pursuing. But then again, I'm not a Democrat, Obama is, and Obama (and the Democrats in general) won last November and that's that.
I don't know that the presence of Ron Kirk in the Obama administration will make the next four years any easier from a political point of view but, at least it shows that Obama is capable of making better decisions than one would think when one considers the prospect of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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