[ad_1]
ANALYSIS: One of the top priorities facing US President-elect Joe Biden will be the ability to get to work. After four years of the chaos of the Trump presidency and with huge problems awaiting him, Biden cannot afford the missteps that sometimes plague new administrations.
The administration of US President Donald Trump went astray when he blew up his transition days after his election in 2016. The executive branch has suffered ever since. Bill Clinton ran into personnel problems early in his administration and then gave too much power over his legislative priorities to the Democrats in Congress. He paid a heavy price in the 1994 midterm elections. Jimmy Carter struggled with Congress early in his presidency and never fully recovered.
Biden can’t afford to make those kinds of mistakes. He promised a national strategy against a pandemic. He has vowed to make the distribution of a vaccine more efficient than the existing spotty system of coronavirus testing. The weak and uneven economy needs immediate attention. Meanwhile, Biden wants to fix a broken immigration system, launch an ambitious climate initiative, and address racial injustice. There is no time for trial and error.
The initial rounds of appointments to his administration point to how Biden is thinking. For his inner core of the White House and the leading members of his national security team, he’s turning to trusted advisers, along with a handful (so far at least) of newcomers. They have a lot of experience, perhaps as much as any new team in memory. His advisers say the administration will finally reflect the country’s diversity in every way.
READ MORE:
* Joe Biden acts as incoming president, Donald Trump is reluctant to give up power
* Joe Biden and Barack Obama defend his handling of police affairs and criticize Trump.
* Donald Trump and Joe Biden want Barack Obama to be the center of their electoral campaigns in the United States.
They have also been described as having the makings of a third Obama administration, a critique that those around Biden are eager to challenge. “There have been some critical reports that this is just Obama 2.0,” said Senator Christopher Coons, “I don’t think that’s accurate. We are in a different time … There is a different configuration of people and Joe is a different principal. [than Obama]. “
Ted Kaufman, who previously helped shape updated legislation governing presidential transitions and is now co-chair of the Biden-Harris transition team, added: “This will not become a repeat of the Obama administration.”
While there could be considerable overlap with the Obama administration in terms of staffing, Biden is building his own administration, populated by people he has met and worked with during his long career in the Senate and as vice president. In the area of foreign policy and national security and in the team that he will bring with him to the White House, Biden can seek out people he knows and, just as important, who know each other.
Alex Brandon / AP
After four years of the chaos of the Trump presidency and with huge problems awaiting him, Biden cannot afford the missteps that sometimes plague new administrations.
Ron Klain, his White House chief of staff, dates back decades with Biden when he served as a senior adviser to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mike Donilon, who will become Senior Advisor, has been a political advisor for decades. Cathy Russell, who will be the White House chief of staff, was chief of staff for the Judiciary Committee when Biden was president, and she was chief of staff for Jill Biden.
Steve Richetti, who will be the president’s advisor, is a more recent Biden aide. He was his vice-presidential chief of staff during Obama’s second term and chairman of Biden’s presidential campaign.
One newcomer will be Jen O’Malley Dillon, who had no deep ties to Biden when she took over as campaign manager as the 2020 primaries were drawing to a close and the campaign was closed. He directed Biden’s November victory from his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. You will apply those skills to White House operations. Another will be Representative Cedric Richmond, who will be leaving Capitol Hill to oversee the public participation office.
Biden’s foreign policy team will also include people he has worked closely with for many years, starting with Antony Blinken, appointed to be the new secretary of state. Blinken worked for Biden in the Senate and later when Biden was vice president. Later he moved to the State Department as undersecretary.
THINGS
PM Jacinda Ardern said she had spoken with Joe Biden on the phone and hoped to have more conversations in the future.
Jake Sullivan, who at age 44 would be the youngest national security adviser in decades, is a State Department veteran of Hillary Clinton and later served as Biden’s vice presidential national security adviser. Avril Haines, who is appointed as the next director of national intelligence, worked with Biden when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later served in the Obama White House.
The potential value of these relationships will be quickly put to the test when Biden is sworn in and expectations for a dramatic change from the Trump years are revealed.
“The last four years have left America in a different place,” Coons said. “You can’t go back to 2016 … So Joe Biden and Kamala Harris face a steeper and more challenging road ahead … and this team is going to need every ounce of connection and coordination to help them come together to get America out of it. mess “.
The Trump presidency has shown the consequences of inexperience in high-level positions and a lack of relationships between top advisers throughout the administration. If part of Trump’s goal was to decimate the executive branch, he has done it. But the country has paid a high price for the current president’s erratic and impulsive management style.
Trump disdained Washington’s political elite and Biden’s new team has been described in not always glowing terms as credited members of that establishment. Kaufman called that wrong. “For someone to come in and be secretary of state or national security adviser, to elect people in those positions who don’t know the positions, it’s like hiring an auto mechanic who has never worked on a car,” he said. “Clearly you need people who know what the jobs are.”
Those who know Biden say that he has long had an eye for talent, particularly precocious youngsters, and after nearly half a century in Washington, he has stocked and restocked his staff. He will be surrounded by people of trust in the White House, could operate as foreign policy chief in a close association with Blinken, and from his years on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he will have definite instincts about the personnel of a Department of Justice that has been repeatedly shaken by Trump.
Still, in other areas that haven’t been the focus of long-term care, you may end up relying on people with whom you are less familiar. The economy is one of those critical areas, although her work in the Obama administration’s recovery program gives her some experience there. His selection of Janet Yellen, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, as Secretary of the Treasury, has drawn widespread praise across the spectrum from the Democratic Party and beyond. The rest of an economic team has yet to be announced.
If there is obvious value in the type of experience and relationships between those that Biden is selecting, there are also potential pitfalls. People may feel too comfortable in those relationships and overconfident in their experience at a time when the magnitude of the issues demands new thinking and even fresher ideas. Will that come from the people with the longest ties to Biden? If not, how difficult will it be for newer and younger advisers to break into those existing inner circles?
Biden has vowed to return to normalcy and a willingness to work across partisan lines. He has said that he will once again put the United States at the head of the table internationally as a world leader in collaboration with allies. You have made it clear what your domestic agenda will be. Kaufman said that from past campaigns, Biden learned that a new president shouldn’t take office and cause political surprises in the public.
“Our policy is everything Joe Biden said during the campaign,” Kaufman said, emphasizing that the new administration’s agenda will be based on Biden being realistic, rather than any particular ideology. “He is someone who talks about things that he knows he can do if he is elected.”
Before Biden’s team can produce the results they promised, they have yet to persuade the public, and probably at least some Senate Republicans, who could still be a majority in January, that the campaign agenda is worthy. The campaign did not settle that debate.
“The results of the House and Senate elections make it clear that while most Americans are fed up with Trump and Trumpism in the White House and voted for more normalcy and measured leadership with Joe Biden They are still not completely convinced that the Democratic Party is presenting, “Coons said. “We need to find ways to show … that we will really deliver results that will improve people’s lives.”
That’s the campaign that Biden and the team he will bring with him to the White House will begin running on January 20.
