Josh Earnest (Class of 1997) will become the new White House Press Secretary in a few days. This is a thankless job with a pretty high turnaround, but good luck to him.

I hope he fares better than the last Rice graduate in a prominent White House position (Alberto Gonzales, who by the way was just named the Dean of the Law School at Belmont University).

Josh Earnest better become Josh the Prevaricator if he intends to keep his new job very long.

Ben Rhodes (class of 2000, I think) is currently deputy national security advisor.

Not something to be proud of. If I am correct, Rhodes is the one who sent the email around 9-12-12 instructing people to say the embassy in Benghazi was attacked by a spontaneous crowd in reaction to a video. It turns out, DOS and everyone in the loop knew it was a premeditated terrorist attack.

Several years ago, there was a Rice grad who was hired to a fairly important position on the staff of the Secretary of State. There was a profile of him at the time, and he was quoted as saying that the only thing he really knew about foreign affairs was what he read in the New York Times and the New Republic. I and many others thought, "Heaven help us."

(06-16-2014 11:08 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  Several years ago, there was a Rice grad who was hired to a fairly important position on the staff of the Secretary of State. There was a profile of him at the time, and he was quoted as saying that the only thing he really knew about foreign affairs was what he read in the New York Times and the New Republic. I and many others thought, "Heaven help us."

At least he didn't say he was looking forward to them

I feel sorry for somebody as intelligent as Josh in this job, where sometimes you have to insist with a straight face that down is really up. I bet he is not a believer in what he said yesterday about the Lerner emails.

If you're going to work for a politician - especially a United States president - you'd better learn how to lie, and do it convincingly.

On the other hand, it's an unbeatable ticket-punch.

Too bad Nixon did not have these guys on his payroll.