Any guesses on the cabinet?
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Well it’s actually nothing like energy czar it’s more climate envoy so yeah it’s all about foreign policy.
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Only vaguely knew the name.
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New York Times: A Recently Retired General Should Not Be Secretary of Defense.
General Austin is a capable and respected former commander of Central Command, but a civilian — not a recently retired general — should lead the Pentagon.
As it is, Mr. Biden will need a Congressional waiver; the National Security Act of 1947 requires a prospective secretary to wait seven years after ending active duty as a commissioned officer and General Austin retired only in 2016. It would be only the third time a president has requested a waiver — President Harry Truman for George Marshall in 1950, and President Trump for James Mattis.
The legislators who negotiated the original security act believed only unique circumstances might dictate that a newly retired general or admiral should lead the Defense Department.
The Pentagon now needs to re-establish traditional national security processes and return to a sense of normalcy. President-elect Biden no doubt will want to streamline civilian oversight of war plans, increase transparency surrounding military operations and chart a new and perhaps very different vision for the defense budget.
But appointing another retired general to lead the Pentagon will not help return things to normal. Even if a retired general like Mr. Mattis was the right person for the Trump era, that era is over. A legislative exception granted at an exceptional moment should not become the new rule.
After four years of relative, if erratic, autonomy under Mr. Trump, military leaders may chafe when civilian national security leaders ask to check their homework. To some extent, that is healthy. Too much friction can also stop or slow progress, true, but a certain level is necessary for proper governance.
The need for experienced leadership in the Pentagon to manage this friction is vital. As even George Marshall realized, Mr. Biden would be wise to select a strong civilian who is up to the task.
President-elect Biden should not put Lloyd Austin, nor any other recently retired general or admiral, in the same position. General Austin is a fine public servant, and he may well continue his service to the nation out of uniform. But the Pentagon would be the wrong place for him to do it.
At least three Senators, including VietNam war vet Blumenthal are opposed.
Gonna be a tough hill to climb.
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Yeah. He needs to go back to the drawing board.
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We must fight climate change!! And the only way to do it is to put John Kerry - a man who accused our soldiers of killing women and children... a guy who is such a snob he sounds exactly like Thurston B. Howell III from Gilligan's Island- to lead the charge by giving all our money to 3rd and 4th world nations until we are just as poor as them!! If we don't, the oceans will rise .0000000000002 inches and there will be no ice by the year 2000!!!!
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@jon-nyc said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
Lloyd Austin SecDef?
Well, he'll fit in with all of Joe Biden's previous foreign policy judgments:
The Atlantic wrote in 2016 that Austin told the White House that ISIS was "a flash in the pan," prompting Obama to tell The New Yorker that the group—which came to control a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria and has launched multiple terrorist attacks in the West—was terrorism's "jayvee team."
A spokesman for Austin told the magazine: "At no time has General Austin ever considered ISIL a 'flash in the pan' phenomenon," using an alternative acronym for the group which is still operational across the Middle East and Africa.
But a Congressional panel found in 2016 that Austin's CENTCOM tried to downplay the threat of the group, leading to "widespread dissatisfaction" among intelligence analysts.
The task force—set up by the Republican chairmen of the House Armed Services Committee, Intelligence Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee—said: "Intelligence products approved by senior CENTCOM leaders typically provided a more positive depiction of U.S. antiterrorism efforts than was warranted by facts on the ground and were consistently more positive than analysis produced by other elements of the intelligence community."
"Throughout the first half of 2015, many Central Command press releases, statements and congressional testimonies were significantly more positive than actual events," the report said.
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Jonah Goldberg's prediction:
I’ll cut to the chase with the punditry: Barring some scandal, Austin will almost surely get the waiver. Republicans will score some points: During the confirmation hearing, your pen will run out of ink on your bingo cards filling in the words “JV team.” But look, the Republicans will want one, maybe two human sacrifices during the confirmation process. And as a career military man, battle-tested, who would also be the first African-American secretary of defense, Austin is not the most attractive meal, politically speaking. Compared to that tough leather, Xavier Becerra and Neera Tanden might as well appear before Congress in a giant crockpot.
That’s why I think the JV team thing will ultimately be irrelevant. Biden will get his pick.
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Well, I would have preferred he choose someone else.
But Jonah’s probably right. Assuming they only have a couple of bullets, they’re not going to use one on him.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
Mayor Pete for ambassador to China.
Really? Kamala would be the one that I would want to send to the other side of the world...
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@George-K said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
Mayor Pete for ambassador to China.
A favor to Kamala, no doubt. lol
But seriously, an interesting choice.
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Pick for the Pentagon Instantly Becomes a ‘Hot Mess’
Few on Capitol Hill this week—with the likely exception of Democratic kingmaker Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina—were expecting Austin’s nomination. As The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday, Biden didn’t tell the Senate Armed Services Committee that he needed it to move forward with a legal waiver for Austin, who is three years short of the seven years that the law requires officers to have retired from military service before serving as defense secretary.
Now Biden’s Democratic allies on the Hill, many of whom rejected such a waiver in 2017 for former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to serve, are in the uncomfortable position of eroding an institutional safeguard ensuring civilian control of the military on behalf of a figure few know and fewer saw coming. One staffer for a member of the House Armed Services Committee, who did not want to be named, called the announcement a “clusterfuck.” Another Democratic aide called the situation a “hot mess.” And it is jeopardizing what should be a historic moment: the nomination of the first Black secretary of defense.
A great deal of the confusion stemmed from a widespread expectation, shared by many on the Hill, that former Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy was the likelier choice to run the Pentagon. In fact, Flournoy was still personally courting skeptical Democrats on the Hill just days before the Austin news broke, according to a Democratic aide. Not to mention, many of the Democratic Party’s bench of defense experts, from whom Austin is likely to staff his Pentagon should he get that far, are Flournoy’s proteges and loyalists.
And if all that wasn’t enough, Austin has taken criticism this week in national-security circles for his roles, as commanding general in Iraq and then U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), in both the U.S. withdrawal in 2011 and the subsequent collapse of the Iraqi army in 2014 to ISIS. That likely foreshadows a confirmation hearing that portrays Austin, rather than the politicians who pushed a disastrous war, as the architect of failure in Iraq. That prospect is starting to prompt pushback from Austin’s former colleagues in uniform, who worry that Austin is being set up to take the fall for efforts that were doomed by factors larger than him.
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@jon-nyc said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
@George-K said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
Mayor Pete for ambassador to China.
A favor to Kamala, no doubt. lol
But seriously, an interesting choice.
He will have to choose to be on the sidelines and outside the political realm but might get some foreign policy chops.
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What he needs most is credibility and relationships with blacks. HUD would have been perfect for his career. No way Harris wants to advance his career that much. Lol.
It’ll be interesting to see if/how they use Yang.
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@jon-nyc said in Any guesses on the cabinet?:
Jonah Goldberg's prediction:
I’ll cut to the chase with the punditry: Barring some scandal, Austin will almost surely get the waiver. Republicans will score some points: During the confirmation hearing, your pen will run out of ink on your bingo cards filling in the words “JV team.” But look, the Republicans will want one, maybe two human sacrifices during the confirmation process. And as a career military man, battle-tested, who would also be the first African-American secretary of defense, Austin is not the most attractive meal, politically speaking. Compared to that tough leather, Xavier Becerra and Neera Tanden might as well appear before Congress in a giant crockpot.
That’s why I think the JV team thing will ultimately be irrelevant. Biden will get his pick.
Confirmed 93-2.
