For a city manager candidate who said he fell in love with Wichita, Robert Layton sure seems to be having trouble deciding whether he wants to move here – which isn’t a good sign. The Wichita City Council voted last week to offer Layton the city manager job. But Layton, city manager at Urbandale, Iowa, is unsure now whether he wants it. On Friday he said he would have an answer first thing Monday morning. Then today he said he needed until after Thanksgiving to decide. Why the indecision?
For Layton, one understandable concern was that only four of seven City Council members voted for him. But as Mayor Carl Brewer and others have explained, the split vote reflected the quality of the three finalists for the job, not a lack of confidence in Layton.
President-elect Barack Obama officially announced his economic team today, including Timothy Geithner (in photo) as Treasury secretary and Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council, suggesting Obama recognizes the need to signal that he’s on top of a recovery strategy.
“We’re out with the dithering. We’re in with a bang,” adviser Austan Goolsbee said on “Face the Nation.” There are competing ideas of what should come next, though.
Over the weekend, Goolsbee and other members of the Obama team signaled they think a huge stimulus package is in order, one aimed at creating or saving 2.5 million jobs over the next two years. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest may be allowed to expire in 2011, rather than rolled back, suggested adviser William Daley on “Meet the Press.” On the same show, former Secretary of State James Baker said he still sees a role for President George Bush in this fragile transition period, urging Bush and Obama to craft a joint proposal “to create confidence and eliminate the fear and anxiety that’s out there, particularly in the financial markets.”
I hope Bill Snyder has success coaching football again at Kansas State University. But he and the university are taking a big risk. Snyder is putting his legacy and the fans’ good will on the line in coming back to coach. And K-State is betting that the 69-year-old will be able to turn the football program around once more. Snyder’s final two seasons as head coach weren’t successful. Will he do better now?
The 25 finalists for Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2008 include John McCain, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, T. Boone Pickens, Henry Paulson, Gordon Brown, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao and Tina Fey (in photo). But does anybody really think the editors can choose anybody but President-elect Barack Obama? In the setup to its online poll, the only “cons” the magazine lists for Obama are: “He neither cured cancer nor won the World Series. Also, could be funnier.”
“Old arguments about the 1960s never die. They just provide skeletons to pull out of the closet and rattle at opponents during presidential campaigns.” That was the conclusion of columnist Clarence Page after interviewing William Ayers and listening to him speak during his book tour. Ayers refuses to give a blanket apology for the extremist side of anti-war protests, but he would be willing to participate in a truth and reconciliation process alongside government leaders who started the Vietnam War and kept it going. But Page said that “there’s not much chance that our Vietnam generation will reach closure through a truth commission or anything else.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was among 73 Republican freshmen swept into office touting the “Contract With America.” As of January, notes CQPolitics, Tiahrt will be among only 15 remaining members of that 1994 GOP class in the House. Seven of the original 73 lawmakers are now senators, and seven retired or lost re-election bids this year. Looking back, Tiahrt said he wished Congress had exercised more aggressive oversight, pointing to 2005 hearings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as one example. The lenders’ problems were spotlighted, but action didn’t follow. “And look where we ended up,” Tiahrt said.
For a city manager candidate who said he fell in love with Wichita, Robert Layton sure seems to be having trouble deciding whether he wants to move here – which isn’t a good sign. The Wichita City Council voted last week to offer Layton the city manager job. But Layton, city manager at Urbandale, Iowa, is unsure now whether he wants it. On Friday he said he would have an answer first thing Monday morning. Then today he said he needed until after Thanksgiving to decide. Why the indecision?
