This will be portrayed in the media as a "flip-flop," or as some sort of inherent contradiction. How can a man lead a department he once advocated eliminating entirely? But there's no contradiction at all. If you believe the federal government doesn't need to be dictating energy policy to the rest of the nation, but the Energy Department is still going to exist, why not have someone in charge of it who believes in the inherent limits of its usefulness, and runs it accordingly?
That's apparently what Donald Trump will be expressing with the pending announcement that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry will be his Secretary of Energy. I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the New York Times is unimpressed:
The selection of Mr. Perry to lead the energy agency would offer a rich paradox: During a televised debate in 2011, when he was seeking the Republican nomination, Mr. Perry intended to list the Department of Energy among agencies he wanted to eliminate, but he could not remember its name.
While Texas is rich in energy resources and Mr. Perry is an enthusiastic advocate of extracting them, it is not clear how that experience would translate into leading what is also a major national security agency. Despite its name, the Department of Energy plays the leading role in designing nuclear weapons and in ensuring the safety and reliability of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal through a constellation of scientific laboratories.
About 60 percent of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to managing the National Nuclear Security Administration, which defines its mission as enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.
The administration manages the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile and runs American programs on nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism. The two men who served as President Obama’s energy secretaries were physicists, one with a Nobel Prize, the other a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
I've always been a Rick Perry fan. His 14-year track record governing the state of Texas - with its aggressive and smart use of natural resources and its general tendency to avoid crony capitalism - has established the state as an economic model for the rest of the nation. To be sure, Perry did not invent these policies, but he applied them well during his tenure and his constituents rewarded him with three terms in addition to the one he finished out for George W. Bush.
During the early part of the 2015-2016 primary season, Perry was one of my top two choices along with Scott Walker. At the time I relished the thought of a conservative governor with an excellent economic track record going up against Hillary, who had never accomplished anything in her life (and still hasn't!). And by the way, Perry's "oops" moment is one of the stupidest things that's ever happened in politics, and by stupid, I do not mean the stupidity is on Perry. Anyone can have a momentary brain freeze. You probably have them all the time, and so do I. It's embarrassing when it happens on stage, but it says nothing about a man's priorities or his ability to manage something or make good decisions. The fact that this single moment ended his presidential campaign only demonstrates how stupid the process is by which we select our leaders.
That said, let's deal with the Times's concern that Perry is more of an oil guy than a nuclear scientist guy. First of all, who says that's true? Governing Texas involves a lot more than extracting oil, and just because it's obvious Perry did a lot of that, it doesn't mean he didn't do anything else. Governors, especially those in border states, have to deal with all kinds of issues including those involving national security.
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Having a physicist overseeing nuclear security might be a nice plus, all other things being equal, but it's not an absolute necessity. I'd consider it much more important to have someone with high-level executive experience leading large, complex organizations. Perry certainly qualifies there. And because the Department of Energy does deal with the question of how we'll handle domestic energy resources, I'd rather have someone who believes in the use of those resources than someone who can analyze them scientifically but refuses to let them be used.
Perry could also be a very useful advocate for lightening up on rules involving refineries and transport that too often add to the cost of energy. Surely as a governor he understands how these things impact the ability of business to transport their goods, not to mention the challenge of simply getting people around.
I think Perry would have made an excellent president. But Trump was elected and that's that. It looks like Trump seems many of the same qualities in Perry, which adds to the many early reasons we have to like the apparent direction of the Trump Administration.
