Mike Licht makes a compelling case against nominating Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture, which is sort of like making a compelling case against nominating Jack Bauer for National Security Adviser: It serves as a nice vehicle by which to compliment their good work, but exists in a different universe from people who might actually be elevated to cabinet positions. And it's not just for the political reasons of long paper trails and liberal opinions and "being fictional." Bureaucracy matters. Management matters. Politics may pretend to be a realm of ideas, but government is about execution, about personnel decisions, about working with other departments and massaging stakeholders. Administrations that have lots of good ideas but insufficient skill in execution fail, and their failure often discredits the ideas, too. See Carter, Jimmy, for some evidence on this front.
