View the original

WASHINGTON — When Ken Salazar goes before the Senate today, he'll be interviewing for an interior secretary job that will put him in charge of 500 million acres of the West, gorgeous national parks and much of the country's energy riches, including coal and natural gas.

What he won't get is the power to set the kind of broad energy policy that was once the purview of Cabinet secretaries at the Energy and Interior departments — making them kings of their domains.

In fact, one paradox of the high profile for energy in President-elect Barack Obama's domestic agenda (he has named former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as his energy czar) is that he seems to be following George W.