Nobody's talking about the president's Cabinet. No articles. No discussions on talk shows.
It's almost like it isn't there. But it is. It's solid. It's made up of people who care. And they know what to do and how to act.
Something new, compared to the last four years of utter incompetence and sycophancy. Remember that first Cabinet meeting?
Remember that each Cabinet member declared their undying devotion and how they were so, so grateful to be added to the team of the terrible president? Remember that you got the feeling that anyone near the end of the line wouldn't possibly have a chance to say anything else?
Remember the Secretary of the Treasury and his wife, who made sure we knew how much fun it was to be rich? Janet Yellin hasn't, to my knowledge, said anything like that.
If she ever did, she'd be gone pretty quickly. Trust that. This president brooks no nonsense. It may be ego (which I highly doubt), it may be propriety as he understands it, but nobody's going to get out in front of him. They'll speak for their departments, and that's that.
Oh, he has a couple of people who have received their share of attention to this point: Pete Buttigieg at Transportation, for instance, who of course ran for Biden's spot but withdrew in classy style. His interviews on infrastructure have not wandered beyond policy and have outlined the task in excellent fashion.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who has taken turns as Michigan governor and talk show regular, knows her way around the media as well. But she hasn't sought it out. Her interviews are brief, pointed, and appropriate.
One guy, just one on the White House staff, pointed a veiled threat at a journalist who investigated his personal life. He was gone so fast you didn't notice his head spinning.
Biden was true to his word: You insult anybody and you will be gone that day. His administration won't be sidelined with frivolity, defined by him as anything else but issues of policy and action. There will be no losses of temper, no wild stuff.
The press secretary, Jen Psaki, is a model of press interaction. She is patient (so far; I wonder how long it will take her to totally blow up on right-wingers), cordial, professional. She is the spokesperson, on a daily, ongoing basis, for the administration. She's not a mindless wank, going out of her way to stifle any journalist that wishes to probe farther. She delivers for the public and to the public.
Beyond that, the Cabinet members chosen by Biden are (a) qualified and (b) desirous of the success of their endeavors, not undermining them disingenuously. Granholm is miles ahead of Rick Perry, who had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and arrived that way the first day she sat in the chair. That reflects on her competence, and Biden's.
We have heard little from the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, but trust that you will. He's not going to undermine and try to ruin public education, like Betsy DuVos tried to do right up to her last day. He didn't make a complete fool of himself in his Senate hearing.
That's because Cardona was actually a teacher before that, because he knew his way around a classroom--instead of DuVos, who wasn't an expert in anything but destruction. But that's easy to do. Tearing down something takes no skill. It isn't governing.
We have heard remarkably little, as well, from the Justice Department, which Biden has allowed--as presidents are supposed to--to operate independently without political influence. That includes an investigation regarding his own son. Unquestionably, the previous president would have stifled such investigations on his son, and son-in-law, with incessant meddling. He would have had no hesitation whatsoever.
This goes beyond policy agreement, which I have for the most part. But viewpoints don't equal abilities to do the work. This is about what government can do when the right people are chosen. Money isn't wasted if things are done well by government; it's fulfillment of promises, implicit or otherwise.
The public is served properly when the heads of departments do what they're told in ways that indicate that they have faith in those working for them. After all, they're people, as Biden pointed out in his speech to Congress last night.
They aren't things placed in Washington, DC, to drive us crazy. They're flesh and blood. They do things. And they respond to problems and try to fix them.
Reagan, who didn't get it, either, once said that the nine worst words you can hear were I'm from the government and I'm here to help. That was wrong from the start, just like triple-down economics, a concoction of a dreamer who never mixed with the common person, at least in his adult life.
But they set a tone that's lasted four decades. At bottom, we got a president who had no idea what government did and just assumed that if he cut spending for something, anything, that was a good thing. He never believed in government because he had no idea what it's capabilities were. His utterly ridiculous attitude on the pandemic demonstrates it.
Biden's work on the pandemic, on the other hand, has gone far in restoring some trust in government. If he delivers on infrastructure, he can add to that. One thing's for sure: He won't have incompetence or grandstanding of his Cabinet standing in his way. It's a remarkable start, almost too good to be true. But then, we've just been through something too awful to imagine.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment