President-elect Joe Biden’s first round of Cabinet picks reflects a cautious approach to the Senate confirmation process, with Biden choosing government veterans with the highest probability of making it through rather than prominent left-wing ideologues who would likely stir more opposition.
The announcement of Antony Blinken as his nominee for secretary of state, for example, signaled a return to the center-left Washington, D.C., consensus. Blinken, the former undersecretary of state during the Obama administration, is broadly considered to be a relative centrist who will gain the votes of several Republicans in confirmation hearings.
And Biden’s nomination to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, is facing more criticism from the Left than from conservatives. Liberals are alarmed that the pair and other picks by Biden represent a continuation of Obama-era interventionist foreign policy moves, such as the 2009 Afghanistan troop surge or military action in Libya in 2011.
Concerns from the Left reached such a point that transition spokeswoman Jen Psaki tried to calm dissent in the Democratic ranks, mentioning that a “range” of people elected Biden, the former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
“President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris were elected by a coalition of people across the country that includes people who are progressive and moderate and Republican,” Psaki told CNN. “He wants to have a range of views of people at the table, so I would encourage people to wait to see who he announces and nominates in the weeks to come.”
Biden’s relatively centrist turn in early personnel picks is a change from his campaign-trail pledge to choose the “most progressive administration since FDR.” After beating President Trump, people speculated that Biden would select Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont as secretary of labor or another 2020 Democratic primary rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to head the Treasury Department.
And for all the left-wing dreams of Warren at the Treasury Department, Biden decided to go with Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chairwoman and the head of former President Bill Clinton’s National Economic Council. Although the pick earned plaudits from a number of Democrats, including Warren, Yellen’s resume was as much of an olive branch to Senate Republicans, a number of whom voted for her as Fed chairwoman, as it was to the Left.
That’s all a long way from Biden’s October statement to reporters that he was recently reading The Defining Moment, a book detailing the history of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office. During that critical period, with the country in the midst of the Great Depression, the president assembled a “Brain Trust” of Columbia University professors who advised Roosevelt on Cabinet picks, such as Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and legislation to help rescue the nation’s financial institutions from collapse.
These people, including Adolf Berle, had little experience in federal government and were prized for their expertise in issues related to antitrust and welfare. Much of Roosevelt’s legislative accomplishments were due to his tremendous political capital, spurred by a landslide election and a Democratic Party majority in both the House and the Senate.
But Biden finds himself in a much different position. The economy is far from teetering on the brink of collapse as it was in 1933. And voters in 2020 slashed his party’s majority in the House while reelecting a number of GOP senators. His one sop to the Left at the moment seems to be establishment-favorite John Kerry as a special climate adviser.
Instead of going bold, Biden must now find Cabinet secretaries who haven’t committed to large left-wing initiatives like Roosevelt’s Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins in order to ensure a potentially GOP-controlled Senate confirms them. The biographies of people being considered by Biden for that role, such as former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, couldn’t be much further from someone like Hopkins.
