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Joe Biden is rebuilding what has promised to be a diverse cabinet, with Michele Flournoy reportedly the first choice for US Secretary of Defense and Susan Rice considered one of the top candidates for Secretary of State.
Flournoy was previously a senior defense adviser in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations and is considered a political moderate. Since leaving government, she has been involved in various consulting positions on military contracts.
The appointment, if confirmed by the United States Senate, would end a tumultuous period under Donald Trump, who has had five male defense secretaries during his presidency. The latter, Mark Esper, was unceremoniously fired on Monday for, among other issues, disagreeing with the president over the use of force against civilian protesters.
If she became America’s first secretary of defense, Flournoy would potentially be faced with the task of deploying the military to distribute a Covid-19 vaccine. He is likely to try to rebuild America’s international reputation, saying at a conference in March that “it is going to take a lot of work over several years to regain that confidence and that position.”
Biden, who has vowed to “be a president for all Americans,” will face the challenge of getting his cabinet elections to beat a Republican-controlled Senate if, as expected, the party retains control of the chamber after two elections. specials in Georgia in January. If you offer political moderates and even Republicans for the roles, you risk provoking ire among the progressive Democratic wing.
Rice, who served as a national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration, is seen as a safe choice for the state department, although some Republicans may object to her for what they consider to be misleading statements about the 2012 attack. To united states. consulate in Libya that killed four Americans.
Questioned during a bike ride on Saturday, Biden confirmed that he was getting closer to choosing a cabinet that will face big challenges once the president-elect enters the White House on January 20.
A largely uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 is spreading across the country, with a record number of daily cases recorded on Friday. A Biden administration will have to somehow control the pandemic while crafting a response to the economic fallout that has cost millions of jobs, likely in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who became an effective Biden activist after he abandoned his own presidential ambitions, could be in line for a job, perhaps as an ambassador to the United Nations.
Lael Brainard, governor of the Federal Reserve and another political moderate, is the favorite to be named secretary of the Treasury, while Doug Jones, recently defeated as a senator from Alabama, or Sally Yates, Trump’s interim attorney general before being fired, could be put forward as attorney general.
