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Much can already be said: the new US administration is becoming more feminine and politically will clearly differ from the current one. Three highly regarded candidates seeking a break with Trump.
The first decision on the future occupation of the White House has been made. On Wednesday, US President-elect Joe Biden introduced his longtime confidant, Ron Klain, as the new Chief of Staff. More names will follow in the coming days. More than a dozen central positions need to be filled, including the 15 ministerial offices.
Looking at the negotiated candidates in the American media, it is clear that the Biden administration is not only becoming much more feminine than the current one. The US broadcaster CNN, for example, sees two women as the most promising candidates for the Treasury Department, and in the Pentagon a woman could occupy the top spot for the first time. The new government will also usher in a new era politically. Because negotiated candidates have a completely different orientation than current office holders. A look at these three possible heads of the new government makes this clear.
Susan Rice, Department of State
In terms of foreign policy, the Trump administration is largely a mess. Long-term partners were alienated, hard-won contracts like the Iran nuclear deal were terminated. In the conflict regions of the Near and Middle East, as well as in North Africa, the United States reduced its participation or withdrew altogether. As a result, they have left a geopolitical vacuum that is causing instability and towards which autocratically ruled states such as Russia and Turkey are now moving.
National Security Advisor Susan Rice with then-US President Barack Obama in March 2016 in Washington. (Source: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
With Joe Biden’s victory, many hope that the US will return to reliability and continuity. And who better to do it than Susan Rice. The 55-year-old would bring enormous experience to the office. She was a special adviser on African policy to the White House during the Clinton administration and held leadership positions in the State Department and the National Security Council. Barack Obama made her his ambassador to the United Nations until she assumed the position of National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.
Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas spoke of the possibility of a new transatlantic beginning after Biden’s victory. “The way Donald Trump has governed and how he has acted internationally has caused us great problems,” Maas said in the last week of the “Bild”. There are “some things that need to be rebalanced in the transatlantic relationship, and I’m sure with Joe Biden that will work out well.” And certainly with Susan Rice as well.
Vivek Murthy, cheers
It was one of the central electoral promises of Donald Trump in 2016: the withdrawal of the health reform “Obamacare.” Even if the big coup against reform failed because of Senate resistance, Trump leveraged much of it through executive orders.
Vivek Murthy, in a medical gown in front of the Washington Supreme Court in 2012 during hearings on the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. (Source: Jason Reed / Reuters)
It can be assumed that a minister of health would redirect Vivek Murthy here again. The former chief of the public health service was fired by Donald Trump in 2017. He had taken on the powerful US gun lobby when he called rampant gun violence a threat to national health.
The son of Indian immigrants declared himself a supporter of Barack Obama and campaigned vehemently for broad access to affordable health care for the population. That puts him in stark contrast to current health minister Alex Azar, a pharmaceutical lobbyist and former head of a pharmaceutical company who is a strong opponent of Obamacare.
Biden has already named Murthy as one of the three heads of his Corona crisis team. Fighting the pandemic will be a central theme of the Democratic presidency. On Wednesday, the US set a new record with more than 144,000 new infections in 24 hours. The number of deaths increased from 1,464 to 241,809. US President Trump had repeatedly downplayed the danger posed by the virus and thus thwarted a coordinated fight against the pandemic.
Jay Inslee, Environmental Protection Agency
As in health policy, Donald Trump followed the premise of protecting the environment from the beginning to revise his predecessor’s policy as much as possible. It allowed oil and gas production in protected areas, lowered requirements to limit greenhouse gas emissions, cut funding for the environmental agency and pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement. In Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist and longtime attorney for a major US coal producer, I knew a man in spirit to head the EPA.
The Governor of Washington with the environmental agenda Jay Inslee at a press conference in Seattle. (Source: Jason Redmond / Reuters)
But now, with Jay Inslee, a proven environmental politician could take his place. As a congressman in Washington, the 69-year-old campaigned for national parks and repeatedly brought global warming to the agenda. In 2002, he presented a program on how the United States could free itself from dependence on other countries by switching to clean energy, creating millions of new jobs while curbing global warming. Inslee is a darling of environmental activists because he wants to get the US off coal by 2030 and convert it to emissions neutral by 2045.
