Biden administration and the Washington two-step

The geopolitical questions arising in President Joe Biden’s new government administration are complicated because successive administrations have replaced section heads of the so-called Civil Service with political appointees. 

For example, when former President George Bush Jr. took over, his vice president, Dick Cheney, appointed 25,000 new managers and heads of departments. Many of those are there still. If they proved too political, former President Barack Obama’s folks — especially for those they could not fire — moved them to outposts where they could do less harm. 

When former President Donald Trump took over, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader and former majority leader, swept away 15,000 or so Obama appointees and Trump further got rid of whole departments (for example the pandemic teams already in place). The wholesale carnage in the Justice Department under William Barr at Trump’s urging was like a Valentine’s Day Massacre. Similarly, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gutted career diplomats in favor of his ruling by edict — leaving behind second and third tier people who are, mostly, apolitical but always kept out of the know.

Biden’s first 100 days has been marked with evaluations of who should stay and who must go — and you can be sure top of that list are unqualified appointees put in place solely for cash received and/or to spike the election results. Even Mitch McConnell can’t argue much about those removals. 

But you can be sure he’ll fight for many he sees as his personal informants and obstructionists as he continues his policy of “my way or not at all.”

You can imagine, for example, a discussion between Biden and the new Secretary of State  Antony Blinken. Here’s how I imagine such a conversation:

Blinken: “I am not sure what is the situation is with Crimea…”

Biden: “Why not?”

Blinken: “I can’t be sure because the State Department always keeps everything from everybody and under Pompeo; there are no mid-level career diplomats who were even kept informed of what he was doing.”

Biden: “So, what were they keeping from us?”

Blinken: “I don’t know.”

Biden: “So, is there anyone over there who does know?”

Blinken: “Let me clarify the question. You are asking who in the State Department would know what it is that you don’t know and I don’t know, but Pompeo’s people do or did know, but, whoever they are, they want to keep that from you so that they know and you don’t know… so, in essence all we know is that there is likely something you want to know and someone may know but we don’t know who or what to ask in the first place.”

It’s a dance that civil servants and public servants at all levels recognize and abhor.

Writer Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now resides in New Mexico.