Any guesses on the cabinet?
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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.
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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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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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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@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.
@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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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.
@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.
