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(CNN) – Joe Biden has already fulfilled his first promise: his approach to the presidency will be a top-down repudiation of President Donald Trump’s behavior, policies and obsessions.
The president-elect is building his administration on long-standing notions that facts matter, that commanders-in-chief must project stability, that cabinet officials need experience and expertise, that a fractured nation is governable, and that the world wants direct America.
Restoring a more conventional version of the presidency, Biden is using his term to thwart the political forces that led to Trump’s rise and continue to cast over 73 million votes for the president, albeit for a lost cause.
His Washington restoration is not without risk and is already in conflict with Trump’s mix of nihilistic conservatism that is likely to dictate the GOP’s strategy even after he leaves the Oval Office.
Biden put his bet in its most tangible form until Tuesday, when he unveiled his national security and foreign policy team, which fanned out behind him on stage, disguised and ready for action, like a team. SWAT by technocrats. in dark clothes to the rescue.
“Let’s begin the work to heal and unite America and the world,” Biden said.
His recruits, many of them his proteges, represent the antithesis of Trump’s authoritarian, “America First” and unscientific philosophy, style and behavior of the White House, fueled by conspiracy theories and the cult of personality. .
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Appointed Secretary of State Antony Blinken has worked hard for decades on the government and on Capitol Hill, alongside the diplomatic crowd. Jake Sullivan, the next National Security Advisor, is a Rhodes scholar and a Yale law graduate and is also a national policy expert. Biden’s select ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has been waving the American flag in foreign embassies for 30 years.
Biden’s national, health and economic teams, which are expected to be revealed after Thanksgiving, will likely share the same combination of experience and knowledge after attracting the attention of an elected president who has multiple years on guard. of Washington than any modern predecessor.
In an interview with NBC’s “Nightly News” on Tuesday, Biden said he would consider appointing a Republican who had voted for Trump to his cabinet.
“The purpose of our administration is to get together again. We cannot continue this virulent political dialogue. It has to stop, ”Biden said.
Its main point is this: the American people, having seen the chaos, nepotism and anti-intellectualism in government amid a pandemic that has killed a quarter of a million of its fellow citizens and as the United States has turned shoulders. his friends abroad, now he just wants people who know what they are doing and don’t make too much noise when they do. His appointments were highlighted on Tuesday by Thomas-Greenfield, who is black, and select Secretary for Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Hispanic, who represents individual departures from Trumpism in terms of personality, background and qualifications.
Multilateralism, diplomacy, silent competition, scientific rigor, inclusiveness, collegiality among senior officials, respect for public officials, the intelligence community and welcoming immigrants are all elements in.
Violent allies, populism, nationalism, White House gossip, despot cuddling, go-ahead cabinet meetings, political pirates running spy agencies, and minimizing politically uncomfortable threats like killer viruses are out.
Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu believes Biden’s selections reflect the man who chose them.
“The president-elect demonstrated and modeled presidential behavior,” Landrieu told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin.
“He’s just trying to show the people of the United States what it looks like when you have a balanced, stable, thoughtful and experienced president,” he said.
The president-elect is likely to adopt that character again on Wednesday, when he delivers a Thanksgiving speech to the American people from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
A completely different America
The abrupt turn that the United States will take on inauguration day on January 20 reflects the clear choice voters had on November 3, which only became clearer during Trump’s next attempt to steal the election. It also emphasizes the resilience of an American political system that has the ingrained ability to counter the excesses of its leaders and often produces presidents who are the opposite of their predecessors.
Four years ago, Trump won the election after a campaign in which he promised to destroy Washington’s political and economic establishment. His presidency destroyed the institutions of federal power and the consensus of the elites in matters of economic, domestic, immigration and foreign policy.
His former political guru Steve Bannon once referred to this chaotic crusade to break regulations, tax rules, diplomatic traditions and the decorum of the presidency itself as the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
In many ways, by placing his trust in Washington’s knowledgeable hands like Blinken and one selected as Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, Biden is rebuilding that administrative state. Perhaps only the president-elect himself is a more established, experienced and conventional figure than former Secretary of State and Senator John Kerry, who will serve as the presidential envoy for the environment and is exactly the kind of global citizen that Bannon and his fellow travelers. . discredit.
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Biden does not hide his belief that more government is good. In a statement released Monday after the Trump administration finally agreed to initiate a transition, his team vowed to gain a full understanding of Trump’s “efforts to empty government agencies.”
And many of Biden’s national security choices on Monday decided to pay tribute to the invisible government officials who keep the country running but were treated as an internal enemy during the Trump years.
“My fellow career diplomats and civil servants from around the world. I want to tell you: America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back, “Thomas-Greenfield said. Haines spoke publicly with members of the undercover community who were often on Trump’s checklist.
“The work they do, often in the most austere conditions imaginable, is simply indispensable,” Haines said. Several appointees have offered loyalty to the American ideal, Congress, the American people, and democracy.
While everyone praised Biden, there was little exaggerated praise and expressions of personal loyalty that Trump demands from his subordinates. Haines told his new boss that he would deliver bad news that he would rather not hear, in another implied criticism of the Trump administration.
A different class of officials
The impression of professionalism and competence that the group gave was in contrast to the staff of the last term that Trump relied on, who in many cases were not qualified for the great roles of the state but thrived by privileging loyalty to the president. .
Not all Trump’s initial government elections were of the same mold. Those like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were experts and experts in their fields. But their attempts to play the role Biden expected of his appointees were thwarted when they were constantly undermined by Trump, who saw his administration as a single service to his personal needs. And these officials, whom the press described as “grown-ups,” often spent their time reigning in the president’s worst irregular impulses.
Biden’s approach is tailored to the circumstances in which he will take office. With covid-19 out of control, he will face a nation that urgently needs an organized strategy to roll out the vaccine that could restore a normal life. Just not being Trump and re-signing the Paris climate agreement will give you immediate victories on the world stage.
But, in the long run, the test of his presidency will be whether his vision of deliberate and calm leadership can pacify a nation whose politics resembles a rogue jungle, where his opponents have not waited until he wins the election for. try to delegitimize it and where there is no longer a common version of the truth.
After all, President Barack Obama once tried to engage his opponents with facts and logic within the traditions of the US system of government. It didn’t take him very far with republican opponents whose political existence aimed to counter everything he proposed.
If things go wrong, Biden will face allegations that the return of the administrative state has caused disaster, prompting Trump to flee again in 2024 and candidates who hope he won’t do so have a chance.
Abroad, Biden must show whether to go along with allies, a methodical political process and laborious dialogue can limit a world of emerging US rivals who have rocked the frayed global system. The experience and foreign policy expertise of successive administrations have never solved some of the thorniest problems, such as North Korea’s nuclear research.
One of the reasons Trump won four years ago is that many Americans believed that the globalized instincts of a generation of Washington’s elites brought their jobs overseas and the wars their children were sent to fight.
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A possible promising Republican, Florida Senator Marco Rubio wasted no time in setting a populist signal with this in mind on Tuesday.
“Biden’s cabinet selections have gone to Ivy League colleges, they have great resumes, attend all the right conferences and will be educated and orderly guardians of America’s decline,” tweeted Rubio. I support American greatness. And I have no interest in returning to the “normalcy” that has made us dependent on China. “
His tweet, which overlooked the fact that many Trump officials also attended Ivy League colleges, summed up the duel between Biden’s traditional leadership in the White House at home and abroad and exploited populism. by Trump.
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