Former Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland and state legislators Tom Hucker and Heather Mizeur were named to a pair of White House advisory panels yesterday.
President Barack Obama appointed Sarbanes, who retired after the 2006 election, to the 28-member President's Commission on White House Fellowships.
The group will meet in Washington this week to select the annual crop of White House fellows, the governmental equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship for talented, upwardly mobile young leaders. (Sarbanes is just one of several actual ex-Rhodes Scholars named today to the commission by Obama).
Winners--less than 20 out of more than 1,000 applicants--will get a high-level job at the White House or other executive branch offices and a priceless entry for their resume.
The Maryland Democrat is in distinguished company as a new commission member. Included are retired Gen. Wesley Clark (an alumnus of the program from 1975-76 and a commissioner during Bill Clinton's presidency), retired TV news anchor Tom Brokaw, retired Sen. (retired involuntary, unlike Sarbanes) Tom Daschle, public radio host John Hockenberry, sculptor (and creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington) Maya Lin, fellow Marylander John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management (actually, he defected and lives in DC now) and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe.
But by far the most interesting person to get picked was Maya Soetoro-Ng, who has taught multicultural education and educational theory at the University of Hawaii. She will soon publish "Ladder to the Moon," a children's book, and is at work on another book, about high school, called "Peace Education." Oh, and she also happens to be the president's half-sister.Dels. Hucker and Mizeur, who came all the way from the Maryland suburbs, not Hawaii, to attend a White House meeting today about health care reform, got named to a brand new panel for their troubles.
It's called State Legislators for Health Reform, and its task will be to sell Obama's plan for overhauling the nation's health care system. Or, as the White House put it, they "will educate their communities on the need for health reform this year." They are to "host public events, author opinion pieces in local publications and use their established networks to organize constituents in support of health reform."
Considering the decidedly liberal leanings of their Montgomery County districts, that shouldn't be a heavy lift for Tom and Heather.
