If Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump next month, he will quickly face a new challenge: raising a new administration to lead a divided nation through a series of historic crises.
After making Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign, Biden will have to show that his team can better handle the public health calamity. He will also have to deal with what Democrats say is the damage the Trump administration has done to the bureaucratic machine in Washington, as well as the low morale across the civil service.
And he will face pressure from liberals for early victories with staff and cabinet selections to ensure his buy-in for his great political struggles to come.
With less than two weeks to go, Biden and his aides are more focused on maintaining their lead in the polls against Trump. “No decisions will be made, from personnel to policy, until after the election,” Biden’s transition spokesman Cameron French said Wednesday.
Still, some Democrats are beginning to prepare for the challenges that can quickly arise once the campaign ends.
“This will be one of the most important, most difficult, and yes, costliest transitions in modern American history,” Chris Korge, Democratic National Committee finance chairman, warned donors in a recent letter obtained by The Associated. Press. “There is much work to be done”.
According to the Association for Public Service, a nonprofit that advises presidential candidates on the transition, Biden will have to appoint more than 4,000 politician appointees to complete his administration, including more than 1,200 who require confirmation of the Senate. There are 700 key executive branch nominations that must go through Senate confirmation, 153 of which are currently vacant.
Chris Lu, executive director of President Barack Obama’s 2008 transition, said there are vacancies in some of the departments that will be key to addressing the country’s situation globally and the climate crisis.
“There’s a lot of experience that’s just gone now, particularly when you look at places like the State Department and the gutting of the Foreign Service or, you know, climate agencies like the EPA or the Interior,” he said.
Launching a team to tackle the pandemic would likely be Biden’s top priority.
The top of Biden’s first priorities as president will be to act quickly to address the pandemic. He is likely to act swiftly to announce cabinet elections that would be key in the response, according to people involved in transition planning who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Those roles include leaders of the treasury and health and human services departments and the director of the National Economic Council.
Delaware Senator Chris Coons, Biden’s longtime ally and friend, is considered a leading candidate for secretary of state, and in recent weeks he has spoken more and more about foreign policy. He wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs and participated in a recent panel discussion on the future of American foreign policy.
Biden is also expected to look to some of his former opponents and those he examined as his potential running mate for top cabinet positions.
California Rep. Karen Bass, whom Biden considered for vice president, is seen as a potential secretary of housing and urban development.
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who was also included in Biden’s list of vice-presidential candidates, and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a former primary opponent, are running for secretary of veterans affairs. . A person familiar with transition planning said Buttigieg could also be an ambassador to the United Nations.
Other news reports have suggested that Michèle Flournoy, one of the top advisers to two defense secretaries under Obama, is a top candidate for Secretary of Defense, and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is a potential Secretary of Energy.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could run for Secretary of the Treasury, though she could face confirmation challenges, depending on the make-up of the Senate, if she is deemed too progressive.
Biden’s team is looking at some other departments as opportunities to make history: There has never been a female or black secretary of defense, nor a black secretary of the interior or secretary of veterans affairs.
Biden could face his first real fight over potential White House aides.
His team is expected to deploy a chief of staff and a director from the National Economic Council within days of the elections. He is believed to be considering returning former chiefs of staff Steve Richetti, Bruce Reed and Ron Klain to their old positions, and returning Jeff Zeints and Brian Deese, both senior officials in the National Economic Council under Obama.
Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive advocacy group aimed at pressuring Democratic administrations to appoint liberal nominees and senior officials, said those elections will have potentially critical implications for the success of the first 100 days of Biden in office.
“The potential honeymoon for a Biden administration with progressives will be very short, if it is making shocking decisions that seem to augur four years of restraint in the face of things that are believed to be serious, a serious crisis,” he said.
Hauser said the left sees Richetti and Reed as “really bad” picks because Reed is seen as a moderate and Richetti is a longtime lobbyist.
Zeints and Deese are equally concerning to progressives; Hauser said they would prefer Heather Boushey or Jared Bernstein, both current economic advisers to Biden’s campaign, to head the National Economic Council.
If Biden wins, it’s unclear how closely Trump administration officials would work with the incoming team. Alan Kessler, a prominent Democratic fundraiser, said he is concerned that Trump could order his top officials to resist sharing key details about the transition.
“When the president says: ‘I am not going to shut up, and if I lose it is because it was manipulated and there is fraud,’ that is cause for concern,” he said. “Will it mean that the Biden campaign will not be able to transition? No. But it will be much more difficult if the current administration does not cooperate. “
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