How to build a government: Transition challenges await Biden
Joe Biden just won the presidency. That may turn out to be the easy part.
The president- elect already was braced to deal with the worst health crisis the nation has seen in more than a century and the economic havoc it has wreaked.
Now, he has to build a government while contending with a Senate that could stay in GOP hands, a House sure to feature fewer Democratic allies and a public that includes more than 70 million people who would prefer that President Donald Trump keep the job.
There also is the looming question of whether Trump, who has claimed the election was being stolen from him, will cooperate. Traditionally, the transition process relies on the outgoing administration working closely with the incoming one, even if they are from different parties.
Biden’s top priority in the 10 weeks before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 will be building a staff and assembling the pieces needed to tackle the coronavirus.
He’s likely to move quickly in announcing Cabinet picks and top aides central to dealing with the pandemic, including leaders of the departments of the Treasury and Health and Human Services and a National Economic Council director. That’s according to people involved in transition planning who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Biden’s campaign declined to comment.
A senator for decades and vice president for eight years, Biden has a deep understanding of the workings of government, and he’s surrounded by a small group of top advisers with equally deep institutional knowledge.
“The Biden team is the most experienced, most prepared, most focused transition team ever, commensurate with the challenges that Biden will face” Jan. 20, said David Marchick, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. The center advises presidential candidates on the transition.
A key member of Biden’s inner circle who is likely to move into a top administration job is Ron Klain, a former Biden chief of staff. Klain served as President Barack Obama’s Ebola response “czar” during the outbreak of that disease in the U.S. in 2014.