President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday tapped several members of former President Barack Obama's administration

2020年12月11日 05:06

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday tapped several members of former President Barack Obama's administration — including Mr. Obama's chief of staff and national security adviser — to serve in the White House and his cabinet, adding to the ranks of advisers with whom he has longstanding relationships.

Mr. Biden announced that Denis McDonough, who was Mr. Obama's chief of staff, will be his nominee for the secretary of Veterans Affairs. Susan Rice, who was the national security adviser when Mr. Biden was vice president, will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council, overseeing a large part of the new president's agenda.

Officials with the transition also formally announced that Tom Vilsack, who was Secretary of Agriculture during all eight years of Mr. Obama's presidency, will return to the role in Mr. Biden's administration. Mr. Biden's friendship goes back decades with Mr. Vilsack, who endorsed his first presidential bid more than 30 years ago.

The transition also confirmed that Mr. Biden will nominate Katherine Tai to become the US trade representative and Representative Marcia Fudge to serve as secretary of housing and urban development.

The selections underscore an unmistakable theme that has emerged in the past several weeks: For all the talk that Mr. Biden is abiding by a complicated formula of ethnicity, gender and experience as he builds his administration — and he is — perhaps the most important criteria for landing a cabinet post or a top White House job appears to be having a longstanding relationship with the president-elect himself.

Mr. Biden has worked with the former aide he wants to be secretary of state since their time at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1990s. He knows his choice for Pentagon chief from the retired general's time in Iraq, where Mr. Biden's son Beau , a military lawyer, also served on the general's staff. John Kerry, his climate envoy, is an old Senate buddy.

Presidential Transition Live Updates: Biden Picks Denis McDonough and Susan Rice for Top Jobs
President-elect Joe Biden is putting a premium on personal relationships as he selects his team. Mr. McDonough and Ms. Rice both served with the incoming president in the Obama administration ..

It is a sharp contrast to President Trump, who assembled a dysfunctional collection of cabinet members he barely knew. After an initial honeymoon, they spent their time constantly at risk of being fired. With nearly half of Mr. Biden's cabinet and many key White House jobs announced, his administration looks more like a close-knit family.

Susan Rice, who was the national security adviser when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was vice president, will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council.
Susan Rice, who was the national security adviser when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was vice president, Will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council. Credit ... Stephen Crowley / The New York Times
But there are risks in Mr. Biden's approach, which departs sharply from Abraham Lincoln's famous desire for a “team of rivals” in his cabinet who And while every president brings in a coterie of longtime advisers, few have had the longevity of Mr. Biden's nearly five decades in Washington, and prized so much the relationships he developed along the way.

Relying on advisers and cabinet officials steeped in old Washington — and Mr. Biden's own worldview — lends an air of insularity to his still-forming presidency at a time when many Americans are expecting fresh ideas to confront a world that is very different from the one that the president-elect and his friends got to know when they were younger.

Mr. McDonough is a comfortable choice for Mr. Biden at the scandal-plagued VA Mr. McDonough has a background in national security affairs, having served at the White House as the deputy national security adviser before becoming Mr. Obama's chief of staff. In both roles, he worked closely with Vice President Biden.

Part of those responsibilities included Mr. McDonough working on behalf of military families, a role that helped convince Mr. Biden that he was the right person to run the sprawling agency that manages health care and other benefits for veterans. Politico reported earlier on his selection ..

As a member of the national security staff, Mr. McDonough made frequent trips to meet with members of the military, according to a person familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to speak about private conversations. Mr. McDonough also worked with Robert A. McDonald , the former Veterans Affairs secretary, on improving care for veterans in the wake of devastating reports of long waits to see doctors.

Ms. Rice is well known for coordinating Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, first as ambassador to the United Nations and later as national security adviser, a period when she clashed with the Republican-led Congress over the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Those clashes may have doomed her hopes of being able to be confirmed as secretary of state, a position for which she was considered by Mr. Biden. Her position at the White House Domestic Policy Council does not require Senate confirmation. (Ms. Rice was also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times for three years. Her last column for The Times was published Dec. 1, 2020.)

In a statement announcing her appointment, Mr. Biden’s transition team said that she “knows government inside and out and will carry through the president-elect’s vision of a newly empowered Domestic Policy Council and turbocharge the effort to build back better.”

In recent days, Birx has herself become more pointed in her criticism of Trump.

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