Three others departing Cabinet had mixed records

By Andrew Martin and Michael Kilian
Chicago Tribune

Spencer Abraham: low profile amid controversy

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While Colin Powell stole the limelight, three other Cabinet members announced yesterday they are also stepping down from less visible posts: Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

The daughter of a peach farmer and former secretary of agriculture in California, Veneman, 55, will perhaps best be remembered for her handling of a case of mad-cow disease that was discovered in Washington state just before Christmas last year.

"They did a good job with a tough issue," said Mark Maslyn, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau, referring to Veneman and her staff. "They did a nice job of calming the waters, easing the fears."

	Ann Veneman: quick action on "mad cows"

While the USDA was later criticized for not being aggressive enough in searching for mad-cow disease because of its ties to the meat industry, the complaints have been blunted by the fact that there hasn't been another case since the first one was discovered.

Veneman also oversaw the implementation of the 2002 Farm Bill and the Bush administration's controversial Healthy Forests initiative to prevent wildfires.

The first woman to serve as agriculture secretary, she leaves her post at a time when farm income is at a record level for the second year in a row, even though the long-term trend in agriculture is toward fewer and fewer people making a living as farmers.

Her successor will almost certainly have to deal with cuts to the 2002 Farm Bill, due to the burgeoning federal-budget deficit and increasing criticism over farm subsidies. Among the names being mentioned as a possible successor are Chuck Connor, the White House farm adviser, and Allen Johnson, the chief U.S. trade negotiator on agricultural issues.

Paige's tenure will largely be defined by the No Child Left Behind Act, a cornerstone of the president's domestic policy that sought to elevate math and reading levels of all students.

"No Child Left Behind is indelibly launched," Paige said in a statement yesterday. "A culture of accountability is gripping the American educational landscape."

	Rod Paige: "a culture of accountability" for schools

But while the program sought to hold schools accountable, its reliance on testing and penalties for underperforming schools angered many educators and parents. Many Democrats, meanwhile, complained the program was underfunded.

Paige, 71, who won kudos as Houston's school superintendent, was the nation's first African-American education secretary.

A leading candidate to replace him is Bush's chief domestic-policy adviser, Margaret Spellings, who played a prominent role in development of No Child Left Behind. Bush has said one of his top priorities for his second term is to extend the initiative to the nation's high schools.

Abraham, 52, a former senator from Michigan, managed to keep a comparatively low public profile in his job as energy secretary despite controversies over the administration's attempts to drill and mine in wilderness areas, lax security and possible espionage at national nuclear labs and skyrocketing oil prices that threatened to damage America's economy.

As a Republican senator from 1995 to 2001, Abraham received large campaign contributions from energy and other extraction industries and was generally considered friendly to their interests on Capitol Hill.

As energy secretary, he was a major advocate of opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. It was a goal he and the Bush administration failed to achieve in the face of Democratic opposition in the Senate, but one the Bush White House continues to press.

Abraham presided over a continuing series of security problems at his agency's national laboratories, especially at the Los Alamos National Lab. That super-secret New Mexico installation was hit by a credit-card fraud scandal and disclosures of missing computers and computer discs believed to contain classified information. The lab may also have lost a small amount of weapons-grade plutonium.

Los Alamos' director and security chief were replaced and the most vulnerable components of the nuclear-weapons facility were moved to a more secure site in Nevada.

Abraham's biggest crisis came this year, when increased demand and instability in the Mideast and West Africa drove crude-oil prices to a record high of more than $55 a barrel. Following administration policy, Abraham resisted calls to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease the supply and demand pinch.

The grandson of Lebanese immigrants, Abraham graduated from Harvard Law School. Long active in Republican politics, he served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle from 1989 to 1991.

Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow, a prime mover in many of the security improvements at the national labs, is among those believed to be in the running to succeed Abraham. Among the new secretary's first priorities will be passage of the administration's energy bill.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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