Biden’s secretary of state pick has smarts, loyalty

Michael Lindenberger says Blinken will enter the Cabinet with plenty of experience and a long time working relationship with the president-elect.

Presidents-elect have few better opportunities to send a message about the upcoming administration than when naming their choice for secretary of state. Joe Biden has sent his message.

Just what kind of message it was takes some filtering. His decision to appoint Antony Blinken sparks none of the electricity that many of Biden’s modern predecessors achieved with their own picks.

Barack Obama boldly named his once-bitter rival Hillary Clinton to lead the State Department after his 2008 election. Over the next four years, he would work through a remarkably loyal Clinton to achieve one of his signature objectives: to rebuild America’s soft power after years of over-reliance on the military. Obama’s second pick, former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, also had star power.

George W. Bush made a similar splash in 2001 when he named former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell as secretary of state, the first Black person in that role.

Nor does Blinken bring the intellectual profile of Bill Clinton’s second pick, Madeleine Albright, or Henry Kissinger, who was foreign policy adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson before serving as national security adviser and later secretary of state for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. And despite his own long résumé, Blinken hardly brings the kind of record Alexander Haig — a four-star general, former Allied Supreme Commander Europe and White House chief of staff under Nixon and Ford — brought when Ronald Reagan tapped him as his first secretary of state.

Picks with deep diplomatic experience — think Kissinger or Albright — can wield enormous influence in foreign capitals and sometimes in the Oval Office, too; those who bring independent political bases — think Clinton, Powell and Kerry — can make a potent team with a president looking to leave a mark. In both cases, the picks bring power of their own that can be used by the president. But Blinken fits another mode of contemporary secretary of state nominees: those who merely extend the president’s existing power.

This camp is made up of those whose chief recommendation for the office is their deep loyalty. This is nothing to sneeze at. The one bedrock requirement for any secretary of state to be successful is a sound relationship with the president. If foreign powers don’t know that when the secretary speaks he or she is speaking for the president, their influence fades to almost nothing. Former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson was an out-of-the-box pick by Donald Trump from neither camp. He failed in part because he lacked an appreciation for public diplomacy. But that deficiency was curable. What was fatal was his contempt for his boss, which Trump returned with interest. Things reached a low when Tillerson was urging diplomacy in confronting North Korea even as Trump was threatening war.

So where does all that leave Blinken and Biden? In good shape.

Some of the best matches in history have involved a president with a sure grasp of foreign affairs and a secretary of state he both trusted deeply and who had experience enough to hold his or her own. Think James Baker, who was Reagan’s chief of staff and treasury secretary before accepting his longtime friend George H.W. Bush’s invitation to lead the State Department.

Biden and Blinken are close friends said to have a kind of “mind meld” when it comes to American foreign policy. That’s key, but they aren’t just pals, in the mode of Bill Clinton and the lackluster Warren Christopher, the longtime friend from Arkansas who served as Clinton’s first secretary. Blinken served as Biden’s staff director at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, his chief foreign affairs adviser as vice president and a top aide during the 2020 campaign.

So yes, Biden can expect loyalty from Blinken, and most importantly, foreign capitals will know that when Blinken speaks, he speaks for the president.

But Biden can also expect Blinken to lean on his own experience, much like Baker, and hold his own in a relationship that otherwise would be dominated by a president who brings more foreign policy experience to the job than any since at least Nixon. He won’t need a guiding hand in the way that Bill Clinton, the younger Bush or Trump did. But neither will Blinken be hamstrung as Tillerson was by rookie mistakes and tone-deaf pronouncements.

Biden has been clear for months about his foreign policy objectives: an end to the disastrous America First doctrine that has so weakened our influence on the world stage; re-engagement in the global fight to slow climate change; and a return to a saner, stronger diplomacy that our allies and adversaries alike can understand, predict and respect as we seek to corral Iran’s nuclear ambitions, reduce the threat from an already nuclear North Korea, hold Russia accountable for its cyberwarfare against our nation, and counter China’s growing economic influence.

Now that he’s president-elect, Biden is assembling the team to pursue those goals come Jan. 20. Blinken, an experienced diplomat he can trust, will be leading that team.