Aw shucks, that sweet old Representative Castle ain’t so bad. Why, he’s a swell, moderate, bipartisan kind of fellow. Since Obama wants well-qualified individuals, including Republicans, who can work for the good of the country in the spirit of bipartisanship, how about he gives nice old Mr. Castle a cushy, fun job that rewards Castle for his true passion. As Director of the United States Mint, Castle could spend all day designing neat little portraits to put on coins and bills. He could invite his buddy Tom Carper to Fort Knox for games of Solid Gold Shuffleboard, play Monopoly with real bills, or draw funny hats and mustaches on uncirculated Andrew Jacksons.
What a much more pleasant way for Castle to end his career than as a powerless nobody from the minority party in the mean-nasty-ugly House of Representatives!
Besides, he’s got to be more qualified than the current Director, Edmund Moy, who until his 2006 appointment to the Mint made all the recommendations to President Bush for cronies and henchmen political appointees to “eleven Cabinet Departments and Cabinet-Rank Agencies in the human services, natural resources, legal, and national security arenas” and “senior political appointments for thirty-two independent federal agencies” (presumably including Michael “heckuva” Brown of FEMA). Yes, he was such an expert on unqualified political cronies that he became one himself. I imagine that makes the Mint position the most plum of all, since he apparently picked himself for it.