John freakin ‘Kerry. Again.
After a summer of discontent driven in part by protests against racial injustice and in part by the unrelated desire of a large number of Americans to get rid of Donald Trump, Joe Biden has responded to his party’s call. to sweep away social change by taking a deep dive into the Ivy League mound and coming up with the pale dry carcass of John Kerry, the man whose scaly face appears next to the entrance for “mediocrity” in the American political dictionary.
Kerry runs a parade of familiar faces, a pack of pirates if there are any.
Mssr. Kerry of the Montana Zugerberg Institute in Switzerland and Yale will be joined in the administration by Anthony Blinken of Dalton School and Harvard. Kerry will be a special envoy for climate issues, which will ensure that there is no bipartisan progress on climate issues, while Blinken, a strong Democratic time servant, will take over Kerry’s former job at the State. Mike Donilon (preparatory school in Providence, after Georgetown), a scary political adviser, will serve Biden as a political adviser, even if he is called a “senior adviser.” Jen O’Malley Dillon, who has done almost nothing in her life outside of the staff campaigns – a parade of losers and misfits including Al Gore, John Edwards and Tom Daschle, before gold rushes with Obama I and Obama II – will be deputy director of personnel. Janet Yellen, a lifeguard from the Federal Reserve who has served that institution in a number of capacities since the 1970s, will head the Treasury.
Biden, after being satisfied with his promise to choose a black woman as his vice president, settles into the famous scheme of employing his administration primarily with wealthy, mostly white democratic officials long associated with the elite institutions: O’Melveny & Myers international cabinet counts among its veterans not only Mike Donilon but also incoming head of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, while incoming chief of staff Ron Klain was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae who is married to a veteran Obama who currently serves as a fellow at the Walton Family Foundation. Great jobs like the Treasury and the State will be full of familiar views, while black life counts primarily for wellness portfolios like Cedric Richmond’s new concert at the White House Office of Public Employment.
One wonders if this will satisfy the hunger of black Democrats for more important representation.
Or, indeed, if it satisfies someone.
Some conservatives may breathe a sigh of relief that the Biden administration is apparently committed to doing nothing interesting. Complain if you like Janet Yellen, she won’t join AOC in waving the red flag with the Socialist International. On the other hand, even when the left wing of Democrats is disappointed, Republicans seeking bipartisan progress on issues of critical national importance are also likely to be disappointed by this same, similar approach.
This is Swamp Things 2, the sequence, and the original wasn’t that great.
John Kerry smelled on the ice as Secretary of State – on the other hand, Biden could have accomplished a bit of something about the climate by touching someone like Christine Todd Whitman, a Green-friendly Republican who could at least have a meaningful conversation with Republicans in Congress that Biden will need for any stable climate program, based on consensus. There’s a lot in our financial system that still needs reform, and very little reason to think that Janet Yellen is going to become now – suddenly – the one to do it. Obama’s national security team has dropped out of work too often, and now a veteran of that disorder, Avril Haines, will be director of national intelligence.
Joe Biden is likely to be a term president. You should embrace this and seize the opportunity to take some risks and take some chances. Instead, it’s another episode of Night of the Living Dead Democrats.
Kevin D. Williamson is the author of “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Wools Wilds of the ‘Real America’(Regnery), out now.
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