That smirk on Dave's face when he utters the words "team player" got me to laughing.

"My prediction is that he will pick people who are "team players" ...he is a brilliant guy ..."

What exactly is a team player? Is it someone who does what his boss tells him to do? There's nothing wrong with that, to a point, and no shortage of people happy to do so to keep their jobs. Who can't do that?

Or is it someone who tells his boss what he wants to hear? What good is that? American corporate and political leadership has been wrecked by the cultivation and promotion of yes men by yes men until you finally get a yes man at the top (and a string of them all the way down) who can't think their way out of a wet paper bag. Obama is no yes man, and I hope he knows better than to cultivate them.

"He will be looking for the kind of people where when he challenges their beliefs they can flip around and make the best arguments against what they just said to him eh, ah, ah, as well as the ones that can make arguments for what they want to advocate because he really needs people around him ...who really understand all different sides of an argument and issue and can then come to the best policy.

The above doesn't make a lot of sense, but then he's just blabbering in front of a camera in a hotel room ;-).

If I were Obama, I'd ask my advisers for a public debate on an issue on some respected forum (like the Grist blog). I'd then sit down with a cup of coffee and read the debate, including comments. Fat chance.

Terry does not strike me as being a critical thinker. His dogmatic insistence (in light of all the evidence presented to the contrary) that hydrogen is a viable contender to reduce oil use is a prime example of that. He is not the guy who can understand "all different sides of an argument and issue and can then come to the best policy."

Here he is recently plugging hydrogen for cars again: "We should use hydrogen (generated by solar and wind power) in our cars."

Wrong, Terry. Wind and solar should offset coal. High mileage cars, bike lanes, and mass transit should be used to reduce oil use.

He also didn't see the biofuel backlash coming as late as 2007. Here he is promoting biofuels, natural gas, and hydrogen on Grist: "Replace these vehicles with ones that run on the cleanest fuels available, which today are biofuels, natural gas, and hydrogen.

Terry is interchangeable with any other bureaucrat with and environmental bent. He obviously is not one to think critically or even to understand two sides of a debate well enough to conclude which is right. On the other hand, Obama is unlikely to find such a person so Tamminen should do just fine.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world