Happy Christmas to all, and to Trump, a Good-bye

Twas the night before Christmas, and all was quite tense,

Not a creature was stirring, not even Mike Pence;

The ballots were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that a recount soon would be there;

Don's children were falling asleep in their beds;

While visions of "Four More Years" danced in their heads;

Now Rudy was sweating, and Don was irate,

The chance for an upset had passed one more date.

Then out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

They threw open the sash to see what was the matter.

The protesters stood on the new-fallen snow,

Shouting "Donald, it's time, we insist that you go!"

When what to his wandering eyes did appear,

But a Democrat's sleigh and eight liberal reindeer,

And a little old driver who seemed all aglow,

That Don knew in a moment this must be St. Joe.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And they whistled and shouted and called him by name:

"Now Donald! You're done for, quit scheming away,

For all you've destroyed, it's time that you pay."

And they carried him off from that famous White House,

And nobody stirred, not even a mouse.

Ready on Day 1? Mixed Reactions to Biden's Nominees

A top story in today's Washington Post, "Biden's Obama-era Cabinet picks frustrate liberals, civil rights leaders," summarizes my feelings about the nomination process so far.  As journalists Seung Min Kim and Annie Linskey point out, Biden has selected seven women and nine people of color for 14 Cabinet posts, but unfortunately the average age is 63 and about 80% previously worked in the Obama administration.

The Democratic Party needs younger people in top positions.  Its leadership has remained the same for decades, and those with name recognition--such as Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Chuck Schumer--tend to be over 70 years old.  This is not only politically unwise, as we lack young and experienced leaders, but it's strategically unwise as well: many of today's challenges require facility with technology and contemporary culture.  Think climate change, civil rights, internet security and regulation, and genetic engineering.

Those nominees from the Obama administration served from 2009 - 2017, as long as 11 years ago.  Many of today's issues have evolved since then or weren't well addressed at the time.  The pandemic, of course, has upended everything, but even challenges like gun violence, income inequality, and health care costs remain as persistently problematic as they were under President Obama.

Of the recycled nominees named so far, the one that troubles me the most is Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture.  I recall him as being insensitive to protections for both animals and workers, and I've been reminded of additional shortcomings.  An article in Vox by Dylan Matthews lays out the concerns: Vilsack's "nomination has sparked immediate controversy and consternation among civil rights, animal, anti-monopoly, and family farm advocates who were disappointed in his prior tenure."  Isn't there someone better for the job?

Yes, I believe so.  But does it matter?  We're finishing four years of a Trump administration filled with incompetence and conflicts of interest.  Sonny Perdue, our current Secretary of Agriculture, "faced more than a dozen ethics complaints" when he was governor of Georgia, as reported by Ryan McCrimmon in Politico, and "he was found to have funneled illegal amounts of money from his businesses to his campaign in 2002."  Perdue is facing renewed ethics questions because of "his numerous and labyrinthine interests in agribusiness and land development."

The list of compromised Cabinet members in the Trump administration doesn't stop with Perdue.  Others cited for ethics violations, according to Bloomberg, include Scott Pruitt, former EPA administrator; Wilber Ross, Commerce Secretary; Ryan Zinke, former Interior Secretary; Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary; Tom Price, former Health and Human Services Secretary; and Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary.

Clearly Donald Trump and his team set a low standard for public service.  Joe Biden's is much higher.  His nominees are competent, experienced, and professional, and many have been vetted in their previous jobs for conflicts of interest.  As a group, however, they're older than I would like, and they're not as diverse as I had hoped.  But they will steer us back to integrity and respectability, and they will serve the interests of their agencies and not the interests of their personal pocketbooks.

A refreshing and necessary change in Cabinet leadership.

Neera Tanden Stands Out: An Enemy of the Left and the Right?

When President-elect Joe Biden announced his choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last Monday, many pundits claimed that Republican senators would sink Neera Tanden's confirmation.  Hers would be the sacrificial nomination that Republicans could comfortably thwart.  She's "unfit to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate," Tom Cotton of Arkansas said, because of her frequent nasty tweets about Donald Trump and his congressional allies.

Democrats attacked the hypocrisy.  Claire McCaskill, former senator from Missouri, said on MSNBC, "We've had a president who has used his Twitter account like a battering ram.  Now all of a sudden it's a disqualification for someone to serve in the cabinet that engaged in her own opinion on Twitter?"  Biden suggested the same in his Tuesday interview with Thomas Friedman, saying that such Twitter use "disqualifies almost every Republican senator and 90% of the [Trump] administration."

The controversy about Tanden, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, grew as liberal Democrats criticized her nomination.  Supporters and staff of Senator Bernie Sanders "seethed" at the announcement; as Holly Otterbein writes in Politico, "Tanden is one of the Democratic elites who helped sink [Sanders's] 2016 campaign behind the scenes, not to mention a union-buster, a threat to Social Security, a hippie-puncher who constantly picks fights with the left, and much more."  

That Tanden apparently "punched" or "slugged" or "pushed" Sanders's 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir years ago has added to the dissension.  Writing in The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi asserts that "Neera Tanden's unremorseful bullying should disqualify her from Biden's cabinet."  Mahdawi argues that the fact that women are held to higher standards of behavior than men are doesn't excuse women's behavior; rather, we should hold everyone similarly accountable.  "If you can't manage your temper," Mahdawi concludes, "you shouldn't be managing the budget."

Tanden's problems with the left don't end here.  As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Tanden's work for the last nine years heading the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) has led to fund-raising efforts with "deep-pocketed donors who made their fortunes on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and in other powerful sectors of corporate America."  If her nomination goes through, "Tanden [will] have a hand in policies that touch every part of the economy after years spent courting corporate and foreign donors."  Though Tanden has support from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, prominent progressives who respect her ethical standards, she still faces questions from others.

Why so much interest in Neera Tanden?  Perhaps because the controversies that surround her reflect the conflicts we face in U.S. politics today.  Women in power, especially women of color, still attract suspicion.  As the daughter of Indian immigrants, she has a name that most Americans don't recognize.  And what about Tanden's bullying?  In the wake of unprecedented presidential bullying, should we care?  When Amy Klobuchar announced her presidential candidacy in February 2019, many stories highlighted her treatment of her congressional staff.  We tend not to hear these stories about men.  There's also the role that corporate and foreign wealth play in our politics.  Progressive think tanks depend on this money as much as conservative ones, and the staffs of Republican and Democratic administrations alike cycle through high-powered jobs with inherent conflicts of interest.

Neera Tanden's nomination illuminates the messy, uncomfortable sides of politics.  But is she qualified for the job?  Undoubtedly.  After four years of incompetent and inexperienced officials directing government agencies, she's an excellent choice.  Still, the challenges of gender, race, temperament, and money persist even as Democrats take charge--challenges that won't go away easily, it's important to note.