Obama's Cabinet Picks: Energy Secretary

The Hillary to State speculation drew most of the attention this weekend, but there was some Energy news. The AP is reporting that New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson has been named to the Obama-Biden transition team on Energy.

Jackson joins Robert Sussman, a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and 11 others. They will conduct a department review to provide Obama and key advisers with information they need to make policy, budgetary and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration.

Per the Obama transition site, Jackson has been named a Team Lead for the EPA Review. Other Team Leads include Cecilia V. Estolano, CEO of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, and Robert Sussman, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Some did play the cabinet parlor game this weekend: in the pages of Newsweek, Slate.com's Jacob Weisberg lobbies for Al Gore to become Energy Secretary.

The genius principle should also be applied to the lesser agencies, where many of the names being trotted out have a dreary, box-checking quality to them. Obama says transitioning to renewable fuel sources is his second-highest priority after saving the economy. So why not talk the brilliant, socially awkward Al Gore into taking the job of energy secretary? Following the anonymous Samuel W. Bodman might seem like a demotion for the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner, but it would give Gore a chance to accomplish his life's mission by addressing climate change—and make up for his neglect of the issue when he was vice president.

Overseas, Kostis Geropoulos from New Europe, asks, "Why not make him [Arnold Schwarzenegger] Secretary of Energy?"

Click here for more NNN coverage on who will be in the Obama Cabinet.