How will the withdrawal of Linda Chavez as labor secretary nominee affect the Bush teams transition plans?
“This will come as a big shock to the Bush camp. The transition team had prided itself on Prussian-style efficiency, and they thought they had an airtight process. Bush did not want to repeat the mistakes of Bill Clinton, whose process was haphazard and full of leaks, and where skeletons in the closet came out to topple nominees. So Bush picked what he thought were solid Republicans, like Powell, Rumsfeld and O’Neill, and he even includes Ashcroft in this category who’d been through vetting processes before and could withstand the grind, and there wouldn’t be any surprises. Chavez has proved to be just the sort of surprise he dreads and hates.” How might the Democrats’ victory in stopping Chavez impact on the wider confirmation process? “In all the controversial Cabinet nominee cases, from Chavez to John Ashcroft to Gale Norton, Democratic senators were telling the outside groups opposing those nominations that they had to have a smoking gun in order to pick off a nominee. In Chavez’s
