With the help of Allie Bice
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide for the first 100 days of the Biden administration
President JOE BIDEN said his administration “is not a third term of Obama.”
However, many of the people he succeeded for his first term are from Obama’s two.
This is especially true in the field of foreign policy, where veterans of the Obama administration are those who are now trying to compile a ‘Biden doctrine’.
At least 16 of the leading political appointments in Biden’s National Security Council have served in the Obama administration, several of which were in the NSC itself. The top ranks of the State Department are also filled with many veterans of the Obama administration, including the Secretary of State. TONY BLINKEN; WENDY SHERMAN, Nominated for Biden’s Deputy Secretary; and BRIAN McKEON, a longtime assistant to Biden who has been named Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources.
The Biden team and Biden himself have argued that the administration this time around will necessarily be different because the world is very different in 2021 than in 2009 or even in 2017, when Obama left office. But there are also parallels – with a rising China, conflict in Yemen and Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea’s core ambitions, and even Myanmar is under military rule again.
“We realize recovery is not on the map,” said a senior administration official. “It is not feasible. This is not wise. We know that the world has changed drastically since 2009. ”
The administration official added: “We believe that knowledge and expertise and expertise is a good thing, but also people who are not tied to old ideas or who are not ideological or doctrinal.”
Many Obama-era officials privately acknowledge that there have been failures in the past in the same areas as they now face. The Biden administration is now giving some of them a rare chance at a do-over.
In other words, the hub to Asia lives on.
Some government officials argue that many of the returning Obama veterans were actually Biden people before they were Obama people – or at least 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 Adviser JAKE SULLIVAN replace Blinken as Biden’s National Security Adviser in 2013, Chief Deputy national security adviser JON FINER served in Obama’s State Department, but before that worked as a speechwriter for Biden. Homeland Security Adviser ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL first worked for Biden in the late ’80s as an assistant to the Senate and then served in the Obama administration.
Despite most of Biden’s top foreign policy hands working in the Obama administration, there are some fresh faces.
SHANTHI KALATHIL, the NSC’s coordinator for democracy and human rights, has never served in the Obama administration. Others are former career intelligence or foreign service officials or have been set out by other federal agencies to the NSC.
A White House official said no one should be surprised that a large portion of NSS staff are Obama veterans, given how many people have served in government and how recently Obama left office.
‘It’s not news that many capable Democrats would have spent some time in an agency [Obama] him at some point, ‘the official said.
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In the Oval Office, where he met with the Government of New York. ANDREW CUOMO, Arkansas Governor ASA HUTCHINSON, New Mexico Gov. MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN, Atlanta Mayor KEISHA LANCE ONDER, Mayor of New Orleans LATOYA CANTRELL, Mayor of Detroit MIKE DUGGAN, Mayor of 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 confirms DENIS McDONOUGH Monday as the 11th Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Which of its predecessors led the department the longest: JESSE BROWN, ERIC SHINSEKI, EDWARD DERWINSKI or ANTHONY PRINCIPLES?
(The answer is at the bottom.)
BODEN’S FOSSIL FUEL FINANCIAL BAN IS CANCELING IN CHINA – Last month, Biden suspended US funding for overseas fossil fuel projects, a move that could put poorer countries on the verge of relying on Beijing instead. ZACK COLMAN reports. The president’s actions are withholding money from international institutions, such as the World Bank, which helps poor countries build fossil fuel power plants.
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FIRST IN TRANSITIONAL PLAYBOOK – DANIEL LIPPMAN report that LAURA BOOTH started according to her updated LinkedIn profile as a senior deputy attorney for the office of presidential staff members in the White House. She was recently co-advocate for the Biden campaign and is also an alum of Latham and Watkins.
LinkedIn also revealed this SHANNON RICCHETTI is now Deputy Co-Director of the Office of the Social Secretary in the White House. She was recently a research assistant for the transition and is also an alum of the Aspen Institute. Ricchetti is the daughter of the White House adviserr STEVE RICCHETTI.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
SCRAP ‘STAY IN MEXICO’ – Starting next Friday, the Department of Homeland Security will begin the first phase of a program to enable some migrants seeking asylum to enter the United States, SABRINA RODRIGUEZ reports. Under the Trump administration, the migrants had to be forced to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases were processed.
Minister of Internal Security ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS warned that the policy does not mean that the border will be open to all migrants, and said that “changes will take time” – the latest warning from Biden administration officials to migrants who discourage them from crossing the border.
DISTANCE FROM THE GOVS: The administration of Biden treads lightly with governors easing coronavirus restrictions, RACHEL ROUBEIN, BRIANNA EHLEY and SARAH OWERMOHLE report – even when top federal health officials urge the public to continue wearing masks and taking social distances to limit the spread of highly contagious virus variants.
“It’s not an intentional difference.”
– White House Press Secretary JEN PSAKI in response to a reporter’s question as to why Biden did not call the Israeli prime minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU since his amp. “I can assure you that he will speak to the Prime Minister soon and he is looking forward to doing so,” she said.
Honduras president involved in drug trafficking wants to win Biden (The Washington Post)
Biden donors are not happy because he has not yet started nominating ambassadors (The Daily Beast)
Biden will have another opening in the DC Circuit Court (The Washington Post)
We recently reported that MERRICK GARLAND, Biden’s choice as attorney general is a huge Harry Potter fan, but it turns out he’s also an avid viewer of the celebrated HBO TV show The Wire.
In a ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013, the panel upheld the conviction of ELOHIM CROSS, which appealed the conviction for conspiracy to distribute heroin. Garland mentioned the show in the verdict and wrote that one conversation between Cross and another ‘could very well have been written for The Wire’.
Has the story of Hamsterdam not changed your view on drug criminalization at all, Merrick?
Eric Shinseki, President BARACK OBAMA‘s first secretary of veterans’ affairs led the department for 1,987 days. He resigned in 2014 during the scandal over long waiting times at VA hospitals.
