BIDEN TAPS RICE AS DOMESTIC ADVISER
Former Obama chief of staff McDonough selected for VA chief
President-elect Joe Biden named two senior officials from the Obama White House to key jobs on Thursday, putting Susan Rice, a former national security adviser, in charge of his Domestic Policy Council and nominating President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, to be secretary of veterans affairs.
Both choices came as surprises, particularly the decision to place a lifelong national security professional like Rice into a top domestic policy job. At the same time, they ref lect Biden’s desire to populate the upper levels of his incoming administration with people he knows well, and with whom he has worked closely in the past.
The appointment of Rice also helps Biden meet his commitment to diversity by installing a Black woman in a White House post with major influence over a wide range of federal policies, from education to health care to racial equity.
Like Rice, McDonough, who if confirmed will take over the Department of Veterans Affairs, has a national security background. He served as a foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill and then as Obama’s deputy national security adviser before becoming his chief of staff.
During the Obama administration, both McDonough and Rice spent countless hours with Biden, then the vice president, in the
Oval Office and the Situation Room. People familiar with their selection said the president-elect sees them both as tenacious managers with a deep understanding of the federal bureaucracy.
Rice’s friendship with Biden led to speculation that he would choose her as his running mate, but he picked Sen. Kamala Harris of California instead.
Though McDonough’s selection was unexpected, former colleagues said he took
an intense interest in military families during the Obama administration, as well as the notorious case backlog at the sprawling department that manages health care and other benefits for veterans. He also traveled regularly to combat zones, and often visited with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. McDonough’s wife, Kari, is the co-founder and president of an organization that assists veterans re
integrating into their communities.
“If you know Denis McDonough, there is nothing at all surprising about the idea that the VA would literally be the guy’s dream government position,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House. “He’s animated by veterans’ issues in a way that he’s not animated by anything else, including national security issues.”
Rhodes recalled many instances when he would “round a turn in the West Wing at like 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and the guy was giving a tour to 10 wounded warriors.”
If confirmed, McDonough, 51, would be just the second leader of the Department of Veterans Affairs since it supplanted the Veterans Administration in 1989 not to have served in the military. The other was President Donald Trump’s first secretary, David Shulkin, whom the Senate confirmed by unanimous consent.
The appointment of Rice, 56, was an even greater surprise. Many longtime domestic policy experts within the Democratic Party complained privately on Thursday that Biden had passed over candidates with direct experience on issues like education and the economy.
A graduate of Stanford and a Rhodes scholar, Rice joined President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff in 1993 and went on to become an assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She returned to government under Obama, first as his ambassador to the United Nations and then as national security adviser, a job she held for four years.
After leaving government with the election of Trump, Rice became a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times for three years. Her last column for The Times was published Dec. 1.
She has twice been a finalist for secretary of state, first under Obama and more recently as Biden assembled his national security team. But she was twice passed over, in part because of concern over a potentially bloody confirmation fight.
Rice’s new position does not require Senate confirmation. In a statement announcing her appointment, Biden’s transition team said that she “knows government inside and out and will carry through the president-elect’s vision of a newly empowered Domestic Policy Council and turbocharge the effort to build back better.”
Biden plans to introduce McDonough and Rice at a public event in Wilmington, Del., today.