Tom Daschle to be Secretary of Health and Human Services  

To be honest I'd forgotten about Ron Paul being a doctor. I wouldn't be surprised if he and others in Congress with first hand medical knowledge and experience are consulted and I agree it would be a good move regardless of party.

I've always liked Tom Daschle and I really don't mean that in a partisan way. I think he's a very soft-spoken and thoughtful person and he recently wrote a book about health care and I saw in an interview several months ago where he was talking about all of the waste there is in Medicare and Medicaid. I can't really recall the details right now but there are so many things that could be done more efficiently and would cut costs without cutting any quality of care.

One thing I feel confident he WON'T do is define most forms of birth control as a type of abortion!
Annie

What happened to Obama's promise of "lobbyist will have no place in my white house"? He has not even been sworn in yet and he is already breaking campaign promises. Good Grief.

You knew this would happen Lil. He broke multiple campaign promises DURING the campaign.

Lobbyists are hard to avoid in washington and he should have never made that statement. But fact is the elections are all a big game of persuasion. I don't mind him talking to lobbyists because not all lobbyists are bad, but for him to hire a guy that has lobbyist written all over him... Oi vey.

Daschle is nowhere near "far left", I'd say he's where the country is right now which is center left. As far as the bipartisanship Obama talked about, I'm not sure how far he'll go with that but I have a feeling the only way some of those who didn't support him will be happy would be if his cabinet was all conservative Republicans. I recall Bush claiming he wanted to be a "uniter not a divider" right before he thumbed his nose at anyone who didn't agree with his every move. Obama called for Joe Lieberman to be allowed to keep his chairmanship and he reached out to John McCain and I think those things alone count for something.
Annie

Annie, nobody expects him to fill his cabinet with conservatives. People just want to see something to show that he actually meant it when he talked about bipartisanship. So far he's done nothing but develop the most partisan cabinet possible while still leaving the necessary leaders like Pelosi, Reid, and Dodd in their respective positions.

The Lieberman statement was just talk. It was a good thing to say, but then very few democrats in congress openly said how they thought he should be stripped of his position. The fact that he met with McCain I think is a good way of showing there aren't any hard feelings so I respect him for that. Still, I'm waiting for some evidence of this bipartisanship and that statement that he will have republicans in his cabinet. For as much as the media has talked about Hagel's potential, I haven't heard a word from Obama or his people about that and Hagel was a pretty aggressive supporter, even if it was never an "official" endorsement.