With help from Allie Bice
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide to the first 100 days of the Biden administration
President JOE BIDEN has said his administration is “not a third Obama term.”
Many of the people he’s brought on for his first term, however, are from Obama’s two.
That is especially true on the foreign policy front, where veterans of the Obama administration are the ones now trying to construct a “Biden doctrine.”
At least 16 of the top political appointees on Biden’s National Security Council served in the Obama administration, several of them on the NSC itself. The top ranks of the State Department are also stocked with many Obama administration veterans including Secretary of State TONY BLINKEN; WENDY SHERMAN, Biden’s deputy secretary nominee; and BRIAN McKEON, a longtime Biden aide who’s been nominated as deputy secretary for management and resources.
The Biden team and Biden himself have argued that the administration will necessarily be different this time around because the world is very different in 2021 than it was in 2009 or even in 2017, when Obama left office. But there are some parallels, too — with a rising China, conflicts in Yemen and Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and even Myanmar is back under military rule.
“We realize that restoration is not in the cards,” said a senior administration official. “It’s not feasible. It’s not wise. We know the world has changed in profound ways since 2009.”
The administration official added: that “We believe knowledge and know-how and expertise are a good thing, but also people who aren’t tethered to old ideas or who aren’t ideological or doctrinaire.”
Privately, many Obama era officials acknowledge there were past failures on the same fronts that they are confronting now. The Biden administration now gives some of them a rare chance of a do-over.
In other words, the pivot to Asia lives.
Some administration officials argue that many of the returning Obama veterans were actually Biden people before they were Obama people — or at least they’re 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 replaced Blinken as Biden’s national security adviser in 2013, principal deputy national security adviser JON FINER served in Obama’s State Department but before that worked as a speechwriter to Biden. Homeland Security Adviser ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL first worked for Biden in the late-80’s as a Senate aide and went on to serve in the Obama administration.
Despite most of Biden’s top foreign policy hands having worked in the Obama administration, there are a few fresh faces.
SHANTHI KALATHIL, the NSC’s coordinator for democracy and human rights, never served in the Obama administration. Others are former career intelligence or foreign service officers or have been detailed to the NSC from other federal agencies.
A White House official said no one should be surprised that a big chunk of the NSC’s staff are Obama veterans, given how many people served in the administration and how recently Obama left office.
“It’s not news that lots of capable Democrats would have spent some time in an agency under [Obama] him at some point,” the official said.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Transition Playbook will not publish on Monday, Feb. 15 because we love our presidents (except GROVER CLEVELAND — we hate that guy) and you should too. We know you’ll miss us, but we’ll be back on our normal schedule on Tuesday, Feb. 16.
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In the Oval Office, where he met with New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO, Arkansas Gov. ASA HUTCHINSON, New Mexico Gov. MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN, Atlanta Mayor KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS, New Orleans Mayor LATOYA CANTRELL, Detroit Mayor MIKE DUGGAN, Miami Mayor 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 confirmed DENIS McDONOUGH on Monday as the 11th secretary of Veterans Affairs. Which of his predecessors led the department the longest: JESSE BROWN, ERIC SHINSEKI, EDWARD DERWINSKI or ANTHONY PRINCIPI?
(Answer is at the bottom.)
BIDEN’S FOSSIL FUEL FINANCE BAN PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON CHINA — Last month, Biden paused U.S. funding for oversea fossil fuel projects, a move that could push poorer countries to rely on Beijing instead, ZACK COLMAN reports. The president’s action withholds money from international institutions, like the World Bank, that help poor nations build fossil fuel power plants.
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FIRST IN TRANSITION PLAYBOOK — DANIEL LIPPMAN reports that LAURA BOOTH has started as senior deputy associate counsel for the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House, according to her updated LinkedIn profile. She most recently was associate counsel for the Biden campaign and is also an alum of Latham and Watkins.
LinkedIn also revealed that SHANNON RICCHETTI is now deputy associate director of the office of the Social Secretary at the White House. She most recently was a research assistant for the transition and is also an alum of the Aspen Institute. Ricchetti is the daughter of White House counselor STEVE RICCHETTI.
A White House spokesman declined to comment.
SCRAPPING ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’ — Starting next Friday, the Department of Homeland Security will begin the first phase of a program to allow some migrants seeking asylum to enter the U.S., SABRINA RODRIGUEZ reports. Under the Trump administration, those migrants had been forced to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases were processed.
Homeland Security Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS cautioned that the policy did not mean the border would be open to all migrants, and said that “changes will take time” — the latest warning from Biden administration officials to migrants discouraging them from trying to cross the border.
LAYING OFF THE GOVS: The Biden administration is treading lightly with governors who are relaxing coronavirus restrictions, RACHEL ROUBEIN, BRIANNA EHLEY and SARAH OWERMOHLE report — even as top federal health officials urge the public to keep wearing masks and social distancing to limit the spread of highly contagious virus variants.
“It is not an intentional diss.”
— White House press secretary JEN PSAKI in response to a reporter’s question about why Biden hadn’t called Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU since taking office. “I can assure you he will be speaking with the prime minister soon and he’s looking forward to doing that,” she said.
Honduras’ president, implicated in drug trafficking, wants to win over Biden (The Washington Post)
Biden donors aren’t happy he hasn’t started naming ambassadors yet (The Daily Beast)
Biden will have another opening to fill on the D.C. Circuit Court (The Washington Post)
We reported recently that MERRICK GARLAND, Biden’s pick for attorney general, is a huge Harry Potter fan, but it appears he’s also an avid watcher of the celebrated HBO TV show The Wire.
In a 2013 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the panel reaffirmed the conviction of ELOHIM CROSS, who appealed the conviction for conspiring to distribute heroin. Garland mentioned the show in the ruling, writing that one conversation between Cross and another man “could well have been written for The Wire.”
Did the Hamsterdam story arc not change your views on drug criminalization at all, Merrick?
Eric Shinseki, President BARACK OBAMA’s first Veterans Affairs secretary, led the department for 1,987 days. He resigned in 2014 during the scandal over long wait times at VA hospitals.
