It’s difficult to watch Karine Jean-Pierre’s press conferences and not reach the same conclusion. She may have many gifts, but holding WH press conferences ain’t one of them. Imagine if Biden tried to remove her!
Why couldn’t Biden have tapped a well-qualified, Hispanic public health expert, daring the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to oppose him or her? If they did, it would only reveal their own hypocrisy.
I can't stand Donald Trump, and yet one lesson I wish other politicians would learn from him is that you really can occasionally defy the Way Things Are.
I think the reason is spelled out in the reporting quoted above - it was a rushed decision and Becerra was already on the short list.
In addition, there's always some element of wishoping (wishing and hoping, trademark) that your appointee will somehow step up and do a good job. There were clear signs Becerra wouldn't (whereas perhaps not so clear signs that Secretary Mayor Pete would).
But the larger leadership failure isn't in appointing Becerra; that's at least possibly forgivable. It's in keeping him past his expiration date.
It's hard for me to tell how much forward-looking damage is left for Becerra to do, with covid basically endemic/non-acute and monkeypox not instilling much fear of sweeping, society-wide effects.
I don't think discretion would be the better part of valor here (fire him!), but I would be willing to at least listen to the argument that it would be a sort of pointless expenditure of political capital.
I think that argument assumes there won't be any other unexpected, serious public health related issues cropping up. If something else does happen, it's going to become even more obvious that he should have been fired.
Cabinet Secretary can be a bit like ambassador. You can give ambassador to France as a political favor, but ambassador to Pakistan or China or something better be a diplomat or at least someone very, very capable.
Like it seemed that historically HUD or VA or something is just an afterthought and it doesn't really matter how competent they are (I mean....it does, but politically speaking) and HHS had also historically been one of those spots. But in 2021 it was clear as day that MAJOR reform was needed at lots of HHS agencies (also worth noting that it's the dept with second largest budget after Defense). Like I don't get how you go with a hack pick for THAT job a year into covid.
Excellent point that diversity and talent are absolutely manageable conditions. This is why med school affirmative action for minorities AND rural whites (worth emphasizing the last point for the skeptics) do not concern me at all. We have a huge number of qualified candidates for every spot, and working in medicine has confirmed that we are hiring qualified people (bad doctors exist, but due to factors like arrogance or burnout that are hard to screen for in an admissions process).
Now if we limited med school admission to members of congress (of any ethnicity) we'd have a huge problem obviously. Ron Johnson is definitely too stupid to be a doctor. Chuck Schumer could never tell a patient they had cancer and would never refuse someone opioids no matter how bad the situation, because it's just not in him. And Dr. Rand Paul is too insane to be any good at his job.
Yeah, the angst about affirmative action has never made sense to me. If qualified, motivated students are being kept out of college and grad school, the problem isn't diversity, it's scarcity.
At a holistic level, you're right. At the individual level you end up telling Asian kids that they have to vastly outcompete everyone just to get a fair shake.
I think it helps morale within any organization for people to feel like they have opportunities for professional advancement, and that presumably applies to political parties as well. So I can understand how the expectation would've evolved that an incoming President would nominate a certain number of members of Congress to cabinet-level positions. In itself, that seems entirely reasonable to me.
But I totally agree that individual subgroups within Congress feeling entitled to a nomination seems obviously dysfunctional. I mean, if the lesson here is that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus gets one guaranteed cabinet slot, do you really want the handful of plausible contenders to spend the whole of a De Santis presidency backstabbing one another so as to be first in line for the next Democratic administration?
I would be so embarrassed to be a minority and for people in 'my group' to insist on hiring/promoting from 'my group' regardless of whether qualified.
The dynamic is endemic to the Democrats, who leverage criticism of this type of identity politics to smear opponents as white supremacists, sexists, homophobes, etc.
At the end of the day, stereotypes end up being reinforced, minorities feel tokenized, and people lose their faith. Even if Becerra were qualified, I don't see how considering only specific minority groups for any position ends up with anyone feeling positive.
It's fascinating how completely the two parties differ in this regard. Intra-coalition allocation of patronage to specific groups is just fundamental to how the Democrats operate. And it has really no equivalent on the Republican side. Nobody's ever saying, well, the last nominee was a Mormon so for this spot we need an Evangelical, and after that we should really try to find something for an atheist Ayn Rand devotee. Everybody agrees on No More Souters, and that's pretty much it.
Not making a value judgment one way or another. It's just a really interesting difference, and one that I'm under the impression goes back a very long way, to well before the advent of contemporary identity politics.
I never understood what Biden was thinking in making this appointment right in the middle of the Covid pandemic. On the one hand, I was glad to see Becerra out of California politics, but I also knew that he's nothing more than a party hack who was remarkably unfit for this particular job at this particular time.
Agree with this piece. It is worth flagging one thing that HHS did get right, the unprecedented decision to not cover Aduhelm. This is saving us a fortune over a bizarre and almost disastrous decision by the FDA. At the time, there were indications in the biopharma press that Becerra was a uniquely good figure to deal with this type of situation. Who knows if that part is true.
Not sure if you read or remember all of the Xavier stuff from Jmart's book, but the other qualification Biden's team wanted was they had to be a yes man and do whatever the pandemic team asked of them. Grisham failed that test and it was not hard to have a completely unqualified person agree to that part
Do you happen to know what else was available at the time? I don't recall (and can't now easily find) the order in which Biden announced his nominees. I agree that HHS seems like a singularly bad choice. My sense is there are several cabinet positions of comparable prestige where the amount of visible damage a feckless appointee could do is much less. If Becerra was living large as the worst Secretary of Labor ever, I doubt I'd even know. But maybe all those spots were already taken?
I agree with everything you say and it’s obvious Biden isn’t going to fire him. But, it may be naive to think Becerra will leave of his own volition. Why would he? Especially if his tenure at HHS hurts his Senate chances....oh, and by the way, I live in CA and never hear anyone talking about him for Senate.
It’s difficult to watch Karine Jean-Pierre’s press conferences and not reach the same conclusion. She may have many gifts, but holding WH press conferences ain’t one of them. Imagine if Biden tried to remove her!
Why couldn’t Biden have tapped a well-qualified, Hispanic public health expert, daring the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to oppose him or her? If they did, it would only reveal their own hypocrisy.
I can't stand Donald Trump, and yet one lesson I wish other politicians would learn from him is that you really can occasionally defy the Way Things Are.
I think the reason is spelled out in the reporting quoted above - it was a rushed decision and Becerra was already on the short list.
In addition, there's always some element of wishoping (wishing and hoping, trademark) that your appointee will somehow step up and do a good job. There were clear signs Becerra wouldn't (whereas perhaps not so clear signs that Secretary Mayor Pete would).
But the larger leadership failure isn't in appointing Becerra; that's at least possibly forgivable. It's in keeping him past his expiration date.
It's hard for me to tell how much forward-looking damage is left for Becerra to do, with covid basically endemic/non-acute and monkeypox not instilling much fear of sweeping, society-wide effects.
I don't think discretion would be the better part of valor here (fire him!), but I would be willing to at least listen to the argument that it would be a sort of pointless expenditure of political capital.
I think that argument assumes there won't be any other unexpected, serious public health related issues cropping up. If something else does happen, it's going to become even more obvious that he should have been fired.
Cabinet Secretary can be a bit like ambassador. You can give ambassador to France as a political favor, but ambassador to Pakistan or China or something better be a diplomat or at least someone very, very capable.
Like it seemed that historically HUD or VA or something is just an afterthought and it doesn't really matter how competent they are (I mean....it does, but politically speaking) and HHS had also historically been one of those spots. But in 2021 it was clear as day that MAJOR reform was needed at lots of HHS agencies (also worth noting that it's the dept with second largest budget after Defense). Like I don't get how you go with a hack pick for THAT job a year into covid.
Well I’d say appointing him was clearly a mistake at the time. Keeping him on is badly compounding that mistake.
That's what I was thinking. If the fear was bad PR from the viewpoint of the general public, a non-CHC pick should have been fine.
Excellent point that diversity and talent are absolutely manageable conditions. This is why med school affirmative action for minorities AND rural whites (worth emphasizing the last point for the skeptics) do not concern me at all. We have a huge number of qualified candidates for every spot, and working in medicine has confirmed that we are hiring qualified people (bad doctors exist, but due to factors like arrogance or burnout that are hard to screen for in an admissions process).
Now if we limited med school admission to members of congress (of any ethnicity) we'd have a huge problem obviously. Ron Johnson is definitely too stupid to be a doctor. Chuck Schumer could never tell a patient they had cancer and would never refuse someone opioids no matter how bad the situation, because it's just not in him. And Dr. Rand Paul is too insane to be any good at his job.
Yeah, the angst about affirmative action has never made sense to me. If qualified, motivated students are being kept out of college and grad school, the problem isn't diversity, it's scarcity.
At a holistic level, you're right. At the individual level you end up telling Asian kids that they have to vastly outcompete everyone just to get a fair shake.
I think it helps morale within any organization for people to feel like they have opportunities for professional advancement, and that presumably applies to political parties as well. So I can understand how the expectation would've evolved that an incoming President would nominate a certain number of members of Congress to cabinet-level positions. In itself, that seems entirely reasonable to me.
But I totally agree that individual subgroups within Congress feeling entitled to a nomination seems obviously dysfunctional. I mean, if the lesson here is that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus gets one guaranteed cabinet slot, do you really want the handful of plausible contenders to spend the whole of a De Santis presidency backstabbing one another so as to be first in line for the next Democratic administration?
I would be so embarrassed to be a minority and for people in 'my group' to insist on hiring/promoting from 'my group' regardless of whether qualified.
The dynamic is endemic to the Democrats, who leverage criticism of this type of identity politics to smear opponents as white supremacists, sexists, homophobes, etc.
At the end of the day, stereotypes end up being reinforced, minorities feel tokenized, and people lose their faith. Even if Becerra were qualified, I don't see how considering only specific minority groups for any position ends up with anyone feeling positive.
It's fascinating how completely the two parties differ in this regard. Intra-coalition allocation of patronage to specific groups is just fundamental to how the Democrats operate. And it has really no equivalent on the Republican side. Nobody's ever saying, well, the last nominee was a Mormon so for this spot we need an Evangelical, and after that we should really try to find something for an atheist Ayn Rand devotee. Everybody agrees on No More Souters, and that's pretty much it.
Not making a value judgment one way or another. It's just a really interesting difference, and one that I'm under the impression goes back a very long way, to well before the advent of contemporary identity politics.
I never understood what Biden was thinking in making this appointment right in the middle of the Covid pandemic. On the one hand, I was glad to see Becerra out of California politics, but I also knew that he's nothing more than a party hack who was remarkably unfit for this particular job at this particular time.
I'm afraid this is "swimming upstream".
All that really matters is getting re-elected.
If it happens to be good for the country that is a happy coincidence.
Neither party has this sad approach cornered.
Agree with this piece. It is worth flagging one thing that HHS did get right, the unprecedented decision to not cover Aduhelm. This is saving us a fortune over a bizarre and almost disastrous decision by the FDA. At the time, there were indications in the biopharma press that Becerra was a uniquely good figure to deal with this type of situation. Who knows if that part is true.
Unqualified people being put in cabinet positions isn’t new. It’s just higher profile this time around.
HHS may have been a particularly poor choice when we were still in the deeper depths of a once-a-century pandemic.
Ah, nevertheless.
RIGHT?
Not sure if you read or remember all of the Xavier stuff from Jmart's book, but the other qualification Biden's team wanted was they had to be a yes man and do whatever the pandemic team asked of them. Grisham failed that test and it was not hard to have a completely unqualified person agree to that part
Do you happen to know what else was available at the time? I don't recall (and can't now easily find) the order in which Biden announced his nominees. I agree that HHS seems like a singularly bad choice. My sense is there are several cabinet positions of comparable prestige where the amount of visible damage a feckless appointee could do is much less. If Becerra was living large as the worst Secretary of Labor ever, I doubt I'd even know. But maybe all those spots were already taken?
Totally fair question--I have no idea, although I generally agree with your premise.
Interregnum cabinet secretary horse-trading is a few degrees too politically #online, even for me.
Don’t disagree and didn’t mean to sound like I was dismissing it.
I agree with everything you say and it’s obvious Biden isn’t going to fire him. But, it may be naive to think Becerra will leave of his own volition. Why would he? Especially if his tenure at HHS hurts his Senate chances....oh, and by the way, I live in CA and never hear anyone talking about him for Senate.