The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn’t get all the attention the National Endowment for Arts does, and Congressman Jim Leach may not be the kind of unorthodox choice to head the NEH that theater producer Rocco Landesman is for the NEA — except for this: Leach was a Republican representative from Iowa for 30 years before retiring in 2007 to teach at Princeton and become the interim director at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

True, Leach is not a Republican that Rush Limbaugh would probably accept: He broke ranks last year to endorse Obama. But he does make the third notable Republican Obama has picked — after Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) as secretary of the Army and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China.