Perspective: Good Cabinet-making

A Times Editorial

Good Cabinet-making

Practicing what he preaches, President-elect Bush is taking the right steps in appointing Cabinet members who will serve their positions, not be political warm bodies.

Keeping his distance from Republican ideologues in Congress was more than a campaign ploy for George W. Bush. The president-elect has shown that he is most comfortable in the political company of fellow Republican governors and other pragmatists who know how to build bipartisan coalitions to get things done.

That predilection has been evident in most of Bush's early appointments. For example, New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman wasn't on GOP congressional leaders' lists for director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Many hard-right Republicans would prefer to blackball Whitman from any position of leadership because of her pro-choice record on abortion. Others were pushing for an EPA director with a proven record of sacrificing the environment to business and development interests. Whitman is no Carol Browner, the Floridian who already had built a distinguished record as an environmental regulator before joining the Clinton administration as EPA director. But Whitman, an outdoorswoman who built a moderate record as governor, is no anti-environmental zealot. And she has the stature to give EPA the standing it deserves in the new administration.

Mel Martinez, Bush's choice to lead Housing and Urban Development, is from the same mold. As chairman of Orange County, Fla., Martinez has built a reputation as a quietly effective administrator. "He's not a show horse," said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami. "He's a workhorse." And unlike some of his fellow Cuban refugees in public life, he hasn't built a political career around anti-Castro demagoguery. His broad experience in day-to-day government should serve him well at HUD.

So far, Bush has built a team whose reputations generally are based on expertise, not political connections. That holds true for his foreign policy team, including secretary of state nominee Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. It also holds true for other Republican governors being considered for Cabinet-level posts, such as Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson, a national innovator in humane welfare reform.

In fact, the only disappointing Bush choice so far is attorney general nominee John Ashcroft. The Missouri senator, who lost his re-election bid in the bizarre race against the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, handled his defeat gracefully, but the nation's top law enforcement position should not be a political consolation prize. Ashcroft is a favorite of the Republican right wing, but he has demonstrated no particular expertise in, or sensitivity to, civil rights protection, antitrust enforcement and the other crucial duties of the Justice Department.

Still, the president-elect generally has begun building a team that suggests he will practice what he preached about consensus-building. Bush, President Clinton and Vice President Gore also deserve praise for conducting their joint meetings in Washington last week in an amicable and constructive atmosphere that, as much as any appointment, sent an important message to the country after weeks of postelection tensions.