Reading “tea leaves” is an ancient art, a way of telling the future. We already have some real “tea leaves” to judge the incoming Biden Administration. Here’s what I “foretell”.
Who Elected Biden?
There are lots of “constituencies” that supported President-Elect Biden in the 2020 election. All of those groups now want to have representation in the Biden Administration. Women, Blacks, Hispanics, Environmentalists, Progressives, LGBTQIA, younger Democrats: all can say they had a “piece” of Biden’s victory, and all rightfully want a “seat” at the Cabinet table. After all, this isn’t tiddlywinks it’s politics. Quid pro quo is in the air.
The President-Elect already made his biggest choice. Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris is the first woman, the first Black person, and the first Southwest Asian to have the job. The oldest man ever elected to the Presidency has a Vice President who shatters multiple barriers. And a record eighty-one million Americans voted for them.
Cabinet Diversity
And from what we already know about Biden’s Cabinet it will be the most diverse in American History. Women are at the helm of the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development Departments. A Black man will be Secretary of Defense, and Hispanic men are at Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. And there are more, an all-woman White House Communications team, a Black woman as Ambassador to the United Nations and Senior Economic Advisor, and women of Asian ancestry at OMB and as Trade Representative.
But there is a more common thread running through Biden’s appointments. They are seasoned, experienced, and well versed in the jobs they’ve been asked to do. And that raises the hackles of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, many of them young and supporters of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Where are the young appointees, the “next generation” that Biden promised as a “transition”? Where is the seat at the table for Pete Buttigieg or Stacy Abrams or Jamie Harrison?
The Biden cabinet may be diverse, but they definitely represent the best of the Obama White House, not necessarily the future of the Democratic Party. This Administration is no “training cruise”. These are the seasoned veterans coming back for another try at governance.
Biden’s Goals
So what is Joe Biden thinking?
There is the most obvious answer. Joe Biden is seventy-eight years old. If there was a President who looked like a one-term leader, Biden may be the one. Seventy may be “the new fifty”, but eighty-two is still in the eighties. If you start from the position that Biden is thinking about four years, not eight, then putting an experienced team in place becomes the preeminent goal. There’s no time to learn “the ropes”.
And there are multiple reasons to “hit the ground running”. The United States is living in the middle of a world pandemic. And there can be no doubt that our country is the worst in the world at handling that crisis. Almost 17 million are diagnosed with the disease, and over 300,000 have died. The rate of infectivity, the percentage of the population who test positive for COVID, is growing daily.
The Biden team needs to serve as the “bridge” for the several months required to get the newly approved vaccines into the general population. It is now a “short term” problem, but a critical one. How many Americans die from now until June will be determined by how effective a new Biden Administration strategy is.
Norms to Rules
And Joe Biden sees the totality of the Trump experience as a threat to norms that have directed American governments since Washington. The job is not just to undo all of the “damage” done by Trump. It’s to find ways to institutionalize and regulate those norms, instead of simply depending on the “good will” of future Presidents.
The historic example is Franklin Roosevelt. George Washington established the “norm” of two terms in the Presidency. 154 years later, Roosevelt “broke” that norm. After his death in office, the Congress and states approved the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. That set into law a two-term limit on Presidential terms.
Donald Trump has ignored so many of the “norms” it’s hard to know where to begin. The list of “fixes” is long: environmental regulation, border and immigration control, the Iran nuclear deal, personal profiting from the Presidency and nepotism rules just to name a few. If Biden sees himself as the four year “return to normalcy” then he can’t wait for a new Cabinet to find their footing. There’s too much repair to do.
Won’t Get Fooled (Again)
There are two times in the past year we were “fooled” by the vote counting order. The second time was when Republican state legislatures prevented the mail-in votes from being processed until Election Day in key swing states. This intentional decision setup the Trump “scenario” when he could claim he “won” after the count of the “day of election” vote, and before the massive mail-in pandemic vote could be counted. We are still paying the “price” for that strategy, as a significant number of Americans continue to question the outcome of the election.
But the second time we were “fooled” was by the order of the Democratic Primary elections. February, the first month of primaries, had three states, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. And for that entire month the results of those three states, all made up of mostly white voters, dominated the news. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were the “big” winners, and Joe Biden was absolutely the “biggest loser”.
For that month, until Biden swept the South Carolina Primary of February 29th, Progressive Democrats thought the election was “theirs”. Then on March 3rd, Biden won ten of fourteen primaries. A week later, he won five of six. But the “feeling” that Progressives should have “won” persisted, particularly when only a week after that, the pandemic disrupted the election process.
The reality of the entirety of the primary results is that a moderate “traditional” Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden, was overwhelmingly elected for the nomination of the Democratic Party. That “magic Progressive month” of February (in more ways than we realized at the time) melted away with the last of the winter snow. Biden can legitimately claim a “mandate for moderation” despite the claims by Progressives that Biden won “because of them”.
Expectations
Regardless of the outcome of the Georgia Senate races, getting appointments through the US Senate will be a near thing. Either Party will have a narrow one or two vote margin. Moderate Senators from both Parties will have pivotal votes over the Biden Cabinet appointees. An appointee too far in either political direction may well get stalled or denied.
So we can expect that Biden will continue to prioritize experience over everything else. And we can hope that Biden will act as soon as he takes the oath of office. That’s the Cabinet he’s choosing, one that can get confirmed, and one that knows how to get things done.
