With help from Allie Bice
Welcome to POLITICO’s Transition Playbook 2021, your guide to the first 100 days of the Biden administration
President JOE BIDEN has said his administration is “not a third Obama term”.
However, many of the people he recruited for his first term are from Obama’s two.
This is especially true of foreign policy, where veterans of the Obama administration are now the ones trying to construct a “Biden doctrine.”
At least 16 of the top political appointees in Biden’s National Security Council served in the Obama administration, some of them in the NSC itself. The top ranks of the State Department are also filled with many veterans of the Obama administration, including Secretary of State FLASHING TONY WENDY SHERMAN, Biden’s candidate deputy secretary; and BRIAN McKEON, a longtime Biden assistant who has been nominated as Deputy Secretary for Administration and Resources.
The Biden team and Biden himself have argued that the government will necessarily be different this time around because the world will be very different in 2021 than it was in 2009 or even 2017, when Obama left office. But there are also some parallels – with an emerging China, conflicts in Yemen and Afghanistan, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, and even Myanmar is back under military rule.
“We realize that recovery is not in the cards”, said a senior official. ‘Can not be done. It’s not smart. We know that the world has changed dramatically since 2009. “
The government official added, “We believe that knowledge and know-how and expertise are a good thing, as well as people who are not bound by old ideas or who are not ideological or doctrinal.”
In private, many Obama-era officials recognize that there have been failures in the past on the same fronts they are now facing. The Biden government is now giving some of them a rare chance for a rethink.
In other words, the linchpin to Asia is alive.
Some government officials argue that many of the returning Obama veterans were actually Biden people before they were Obama people – or at least they are half-and-half.
Blinken was Obama’s deputy secretary of state, but he also worked for Biden in the Senate and was Biden’s first national security adviser when he became vice president.
National Security Advisor JAKE SULLIVAN replace Blinken as Biden’s National Security Adviser in 2013, principal deputy national security adviser JON FINER served in Obama’s State Department, but before that he worked as a speechwriter for Biden. Domestic security adviser ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL First worked for Biden in the late 1980s as an assistant to the Senate and then served in the Obama administration.
Despite most of Biden’s best foreign policy hands having worked in the Obama administration, there are some new faces.
SHANTHI KALATHIL, the NSC’s Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights, has never served in the Obama administration. Others are former career information or foreign service officials or have been reported to the NSC by other federal agencies.
A White House official said no one should be surprised that a large portion of the NSC’s staff are Obama veterans, given the number of people who have served in the administration and how recently Obama left office.
It’s no news that many capable Democrats would have spent some time in an agency [Obama] him at one point, ”the officer said.
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In the Oval Office, where he met with New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO, Arkansas Gov. ASA HUTCHINSON, New Mexico Gov. MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN, Atlanta Greater KEISHA LANS PANTS, Mayor of New Orleans LATOYA CANTRELL, Mayor of Detroit MIKE DUGGAN, Greater Miami FRANCIS SUAREZ and JEFF WILLIAMS, the mayor of Arlington, Texas, to discuss the pandemic.
With Biden in the Oval Office.
With the Center for Presidential Transition
The Senate confirmed DENIS McDONOUGH on Monday as the 11th Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Which of his predecessors led the department the longest: JESSE BROWN ERIC SHINSEKI EDWARD DERWINSKY or ANTHONY PRINCIPI
(Answer is at the bottom.)
BIDEN’S BAN ON FOSSIL FUEL FINANCING PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON CHINA – Last month, Biden stopped US funding for overseas fossil fuel projects, a move that could lead poorer countries to rely on Beijing instead. ZACK COLMAN reports. The president’s action involves money from international institutions, such as the World Bank, that help poor countries build fossil fuel power plants.
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FIRST IN TRANSITION PLAYBOOK – DANIEL LIPPMAN reports that LAURA CAB started as senior deputy associate counsel for the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, according to her updated LinkedIn profile. She was most recently associate counsel for the Biden campaign and is also an alum of Latham and Watkins.
LinkedIn also revealed that SHANNON RICCHETTI is now deputy assistant director of the office of the social secretary at the White House. Most recently, she was a research assistant for the transition and is also an alum at the Aspen Institute. Ricchetti is the daughter of White House CounseloSTEVE RICCHETTI.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
WASTE ‘STAY IN MEXICO’ – Starting this Friday, the Department of Homeland Security will begin the first phase of a program to bring some asylum-seeking migrants into the US, SABRINA RODRIGUEZ reports. Under the Trump administration, those migrants were forced to stay in Mexico while their asylum applications were being processed.
Secretary of Homeland Security ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS warned that the policy did not mean the border would be open to all migrants, saying that “changes will take time” – the latest warning from officials of the Biden administration to migrants discouraging them from crossing the border.
THE GOVS EXPLAIN: The Biden government is acting lightly with governors relaxing coronavirus restrictions, RACHEL ROUBEIN BRIANNA EHLEY and SARAH OWERMOHLE report – even as top federal health officials are urging the public to continue wearing masks and social distances to limit the spread of highly contagious virus variants.
“It’s not a deliberate diss.”
– White House press secretary JEN PSAKI in response to a reporter’s question as to why Biden had not called the Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU since taking office. “I can assure you that he will speak to the Prime Minister soon and he looks forward to doing so,” she said.
President of Honduras, involved in drug trafficking, wants to win over Biden (The Washington Post)
Biden donors aren’t happy he hasn’t started appointing ambassadors (The Daily Beast)
Biden will have one more opening to fill the DC Circuit Court (The Washington Post)
We recently reported that MERRICK GARLANDBiden’s choice for attorney general, is a huge Harry Potter fan, but it seems he is also an avid viewer of the famous HBO TV show The Wire.
In a 2013 DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the panel upheld the conviction of ELOHIM CROSS, who appealed the conviction of conspiracy to distribute heroin. Garland mentioned the show in the statement, writing that a conversation between Cross and another man “could very well have been written for The Wire.”
Didn’t the Hamsterdam story change your view of drug crime at all, Merrick?
Eric Shinseki, Chairman BARACK OBAMAFirst Secretary of Veterans Affairs, led the department for 1987 days. He resigned in 2014 during the long waiting scandal at VA hospitals.
