Biden’s Cabinet Picks Are Boring. It’s Awesome.
President-elect Joe Biden has done his best to stay above the fray of the post-election tomfoolery and has carried on with his transition plans. While President Trump and his legal team continue attempts to cast doubt on the validity of the election results, the courts and various states have not swayed in their steadfastness to honoring the electoral process.
With no indication that an usurpation of the upcoming presidential term will occur, President-elect Biden has begun to announce his choices for the people who will serve in his cabinet. During the current administration, such announcements have been met with consternation and bewilderment as to how the decision was reached.
For example, the current Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is Dr. Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2016. According to the HUD website, the agency is “responsible for national policy and programs that address America’s housing needs, that improve and develop the Nation’s communities, and enforce fair housing laws,” areas that Dr. Carson appears to have little to no relevant experience given his past as a medical professional.
Another example would be former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. A former civil engineer and career executive with ExxonMobil and its many subsidiaries, Tillerson’s nomination was met with a considerable amount of pushback, with 43 senators voting against his appointment, eclipsing the previous record of 14. While Tillerson did have at least some experience in international relations given his executive career with a large multinational conglomerate, his tenure in office was seen ineffective and at times even detrimental to the interest of the United States.
In stark contrast to these types of nominees under the Trump administration, the names being put forth by President-elect Biden have the weight of experience and knowledge within the fields which they will be tasked to lead.
Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, a position that will be important in repairing many of the mishandled and broken relationships with allies around the world, is Antony Blinken. Having served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017 and Deputy National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2015, Blinken has a multitude of experience in the field of foreign policy that both Tillerson and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former congressman and Director of the CIA, both lack.
Another one of Biden’s picks is Alejandro Mayorkas for the position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As it stands now, there has been no Secretary of DHS since April of 2019, when then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned after a tumultuous tenure in office. There have been acting secretaries in the meantime; however, those appointments were deemed unlawful earlier this year, found to be in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Mayorkas will be taking over a department that has been marred with scandal thanks in no small part to its implementation of a family separation policy and uses of excessive force at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013 and then as Deputy Secretary of DHS between 2013 and 2014, Mayorkas is again a pick from President-elect Biden that appears to possess a distinct familiarity with the department he has been chosen to head.
Biden’s picks have not been without their detractors, with some Republican senators appearing to signal that they would be wary of confirming the career bureaucrats despite their apparent qualifications. Resistance has also come from within the Democratic party, with more progressive members pushing for more left-leaning nominees, rather than the status quo moderates they feel have been put up so far.
While politicians and pundits will have their opinions on the picks, there appears to be an explicit effort to move away from, as Max Boot put in an article in the Washington Post, the “grifters, trolls and fanatics” that populate the current administration.
So, while Biden’s potential future cabinet will be full of perceived boring moderates, it is unlikely that there will be a recurring upheaval in the ranks that we see in the current administration.
The slow, grinding wheels of the federal government will continue on, with writers like me trying to find anything that we can sensationalize for views, having lost our cash cow that is the dysfunctional Trump administration.
And it’s awesome.
