New Cabinet-Positions Needed

Now that a certain percentage of the U.S. population is going to elect a new president, I believe it's time to think about some new cabinet-positions.

I'll get the most self-centered one out of the way first: I think the absence of a Secretary of Poetry has represented a glaring oversight from the beginning of the republic into our present imperial period. Let's take care of that after the next election. I want some press-conferences where reporters pepper the Sec. of Poetry with questions about trochaic meter, surrealistic imagery, and women coming and going into rooms speaking of Michaelangelo.

I'd also rename the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The Secretary of Housing and Urban Humanity. We seem to do the development-part real well. For whom and how are different questions.

Arguably, we need a Secretary of Consequences, whose job it will be to predict what will flow from a president's decisions, precipitous and otherwise. She or he would soon probably be known as the Sec. of Uh-Oh or the Sec. of Oh, No. In this new department, perhaps there could be an Under-Secretary for History, her or his main job being to remind people that bad (and good) ideas have a history.

I'm not sure we still need a Secretary of the Treasury because there's nothing left in the treasury. Perhaps he or she could simply become the night-janitor. We need, instead, a Secretary of Debt. I believe I could get the support of Ron Paul and several recluses who live in the Mojave Desert in old Airstream trailers for this idea. Not a groundswell, per se, but, hey, you have to start small, and, in the case of Ron Paul, weird. How he manages to answer every debate questions with "The gold standard," I do not know, but I'm impressed.

I'd go back to the old name for the Secretary of Defense: the Secretary of War. It was refreshingly counter-Orwellian. I would then add a Secretary of Peace, for symmetry and out of blind hope.

A Department of Rhetoric is clearly needed. The Government Accounting Office now investigates how money is mis-spent. Although nothing is done with these investigations, it is good to know something close to the truth. The Sec. of Rhetoric would be responsible for analyzing the rhetoric of top-level politicians and explaining the traditions out of which the rhetoric sprang, the logical fallacies, the good and bad appeals, modus ponens, modus tolens, and so on. All politicians are slick. Congressperson Socrates is a politician. Therefore, . . . .

Apparently we have a Secretary of the Interior, which sounds vaguely contemplative but which actually operates the Forest Service, against whom my father held a life-long grudge involving their (its) alleged incompetence. If this department concerns itself with the outdoors, wouldn't it be better named the Department of the Exterior? Then the Department of the Interior could advise people either on decorating-choices, their inner lives, or digestion.

Do we need a Secretary of Philosophy? I would argue Yes. When Clinton quibbled with the meaning of "is," that was an obvious Wittgenstein-move, and the U.S. Dept. of Philosophy could have stepped in. Bush II is obviously an absurdist. The Secret Service's code-name for him is probably Gregor Mendel. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, is obviously counter-Nihilist and a bracing attack on post-Modernism. As I've noted before, that McCain calls what is a "bus" the "Straight-Talk Express" is a sophisticated irony with which philosophers could help. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chant "Yes, we can." This implies a belief in free will. What would be the U.S. Department of Philosophy's stance on this?

Good night, and good luck.