Biden’s Cabinet: Built for comfort and diversity
“Much like Jake Blues,” said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com, Joe Biden is “getting the band back together.” The president-elect has been filling out his Cabinet and Cabinet-level positions—and heavily recycling familiar names from the Obama administration. Former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough will return to run Veterans Affairs, though he’s not a veteran and has no experience in health-care administration, while former national security adviser Susan Rice—whose specialty is foreign affairs—will oversee the domestic policy council. Tom Vilsack will return as agriculture secretary, a position he held for eight years under President Obama. Biden also named California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to become the first Latino czar of the Department of Health and Human Services, though he has little experience in health policy, and Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) as the secretary of housing development—a position she had publicly complained usually went to African-Americans such as herself. Biden’s Cabinet is “built for comfort,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Perhaps his most controversial pick has been retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to head the Pentagon—a critical position that by law is headed by a civilian, unless Congress grants a waiver. Why Austin? Biden got to know and respect him as his deceased son Beau’s former commanding officer in Iraq. These “sane men and women” will no doubt restore order and competence after four years of President Trump’s chaos, but the danger is that in a rapidly changing world filled with major challenges, they will lack the necessary creativity and vision to “shake things up.”
Biden is obviously caught between “conflicting imperatives,” said Eric Levitz in NYMag.com. He wants to “surround himself with old friends” but also fulfill his pledge to make his Cabinet the most diverse in history. So it looks as if he’s “writing the names of Cabinet positions on tiny slips of paper; tossing them into a hat; and then inviting ex–Obama White House officials, and a select group of nonwhite Democrats, to reach in and draw their new jobs.” This week he checked off the LGBTQ box by announcing he’d nominate former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary, although Mayor Pete has no experience in that field. This “identity-based hiring” doesn’t bode well for Biden’s future decisions, said Zachary Faria in Washington Examiner.com. “The Democratic Party’s idea of leadership has devolved” into a checklist based on skin color, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.
Austin would be the first AfricanAmerican to head the Pentagon, but he’s actually Biden’s most troubling choice, said The New York Times in an editorial. Austin had a distinguished, 41-year career in the Army and presided over the difficult withdrawal of 150,000 U.S. soldiers from Iraq, but there is a reason the law requires civilian leadership of the Pentagon. Military leaders are “trained to follow orders and win battles,” while civilians have to ask “why those battles are being fought in the first place.” Biden should have picked a China expert to run the Pentagon, said Oriana Skylar Mastro in The Washington Post. China now represents the greatest long-term risk to America’s security, but Austin spent the best years of his “illustrious career” overseeing America’s wars in the Middle East. Experience fighting ISIS will hardly prepare him to lead America into the next “great-power competition.”
Here’s why Austin is “the right man for the job,” said Mark Hertling in CNN.com. When I served under him in Iraq, he proved he was an empathetic, pragmatic problem solver with extraordinary organizational and political chops. He’s introverted but deeply thoughtful, and “he has the personal courage to speak truth to power and provide valuable insight to his president.” Becerra is another excellent choice, as the next health secretary, said Dan Morain in The Washington Post. Republicans would love to reject him, but his résumé leaves them with “little room to maneuver.” Yes, he’s a California liberal who has fought for abortion rights, gun safety, the Affordable Care Act, and immigrant rights as a Los Angeles congressman and state attorney general. But he has an “utterly American” backstory as the son of a Mexican immigrant, with a history of “sheer determination.”
Becerra is “a fine pick,” but progressives are otherwise very disappointed in Biden’s nominees, said Alex Pareene in NewRepublic .com. He seems to have deliberately ignored possible nominees “for whom liberal, civil rights, and interest groups” were lobbying in favor of center-left insiders acceptable to the Democratic establishment. Denying the party’s left wing a voice in this administration will lead to infighting and bitterness. But we should have expected as much from a campaign that “relied in large part on nostalgia.”