I remember Nixon, and Haldeman, and Erlichman
via Indianz.com, this gem -- "If he wins the November election, Obama plans to appoint an Indian policy advisor at the White House".
So, he's going to rise to the level of Nixon, Haldeman and Erlichman, which is actually the gold standard, the high-water mark for the Federal-Tribal relationship, but he's too inexperienced to actually know what he's doing, and in all liklihood, he'll just promote Ross Swimmer. That plus an annual "Summit", which either means a do-nothing 400-and-some-plus-ONE media circus, or a USET+NCAI+IGA+ONE clubman's foursome that excludes Hawai'i, Alaska, and all the fucked-over-by-the-BIA, the fucked-over-by-corrupt-Chairs, the fucked-over-by-Abramoff, and all of the Urbans.
Edwards actually worked the Lumbee issue, which counts far more than the promise of symbolism and circuses. Edwards could cut to the chase and just say "I will invite Ms. Eloise Cobell to join my Administration as Secretary of the Interior. He could run that into the seam of dirt MB's mined since we set our sights on Saint John McCain, hitting Haliburton and the Petro-Oligarchy as casually as children chase crows out of the garden corn.
Cobell v Babbit began under Clinton, and the MMS mess wasn't invented by the RNC, they just improved on a pre-existing condition.
