Frances Perkins

How well-known are minor members of the US cabinet?

Obviously everybody knows the president, the vice-president, the attorney-general and so on....but can you really name your secretary of agriculture? In the UK, cabinet members are virtually household names as they appear regularly on the news. But how high-profile are US cabinet members? Is being the transportation secretary a one-way ticket to obscurity?

Public Comments

1. As long as they are doing their job well, we don't care. We also don't hold votes of confidence every other week to attempt to change the government. Besides, the good ones are there to serve, not gain notoriety.
2. Unless you make a fool of yourself, it is obscure
3. American cabinet members are often on the news shows but that doesn't make them household names. There are a couple of reasons for this. First and foremost is that most Americans have very little genuine concern with government. Although it often appears that America is wracked with political controversy, most people don't really pay much attention because they are generally satisfied with the way things are going. Polls have repeatedly shown that most citizens don't even know the name of their own representative in Congress. Second, cabinet members in the United States are not, as is often the case in the UK, leaders of party factions and real or potential rivals of the Party leader. The lack of that sort of drama makes American politics a lot less interesting.