Starting to Look a Bit More Like America : Three more women join Clinton’s top team

With his campaign theme of “putting people first,” candidate Bill Clinton suggested that government should define itself not by who it excludes but by who it includes. With his first wave of Cabinet and high-level appointments, President-elect Clinton chose a safe, mainstream group of Washington and Wall Street insiders. Friday he presented the second cluster, a younger group of well-regarded academic and activist state officials. With Friday’s appointments--appointments that include three women--Clinton’s top advisers form a group that is indeed beginning to look more like America.

For the secretary of health and human services, Clinton chose Donna Shalala, 51. Shalala--chancellor at the University of Wisconsin, the first woman to head a Big Ten university--succeeded Hillary Clinton as the chair of the national lobby on behalf of children, the Children’s Defense Fund. In what may be a historical first, Shalala in her brief acceptance remarks paid tribute not only to Bill Clinton but to “the other Clinton,” and she promised to work to ensure, as the CDF slogan goes, that “no child is left behind.” In her Cabinet post, Shalala will have the chance to help America’s children, as well as its poor and aged. She will oversee the federal government’s largest department, with a budget that at $585 billion is almost double the Pentagon’s.

Carol Browner, 36, will head the Environmental Protection Agency, a job that is expected to gain Cabinet-level status under Clinton and will be treated by him as a Cabinet job until it is officially designated so by legislation. Browner, Florida’s top environmental official, is a former legislative aide to Vice President-elect Al Gore. She brings a strong record of environmental protection, including, of special interest to Californians, winning a federal moratorium on oil drilling off the Florida Keys.

UC Berkeley economist Laura Tyson, 45, will head the longstanding Council of Economic Advisers, not to be confused with Clinton’s newly created National Economic Council. A trade expert, she has called herself a “cautious activist” for managed trade. Given that opponents have called her managed-trade policy a euphemism for protectionism, it was good to hear her declare Friday that the country “need(s) an open international trading system.”

And for secretary of labor, Clinton chose longtime friend and adviser Robert B. Reich of Harvard University. Reich, 46, has been a strong advocate of what Clinton called the “lifetime training and education” of the work force. A few labor officials were disappointed that the next labor secretary doesn’t come from the union movement, and a few business officials thought Reich was too liberal--but in the main his appointment was applauded. Reich’s useful advocacy of rebuilding the nation’s roads and other infrastructure and keeping American workers up to date in training is sure to get a full hearing by the President-elect.

Clinton’s Cabinet so far is shaping up to reflect a broad range of views. All that is missing now are the viewpoints and expertise of America’s people of color. When Clinton adds those key people--as he is expected to--to his Cabinet, the Clinton team will truly reflect the real America.