The Man, the Boy, and the Democratic Donkey

Joe Biden has been trying to build a "diverse" Cabinet to produce an executive branch that looks like America, but for every group he pleases, he ticks someone else off.  And sometimes he can't even please the groups he sets out to please.

Biden, under pressure from black groups to name more blacks to his Cabinet, named retired General Lloyd Austin (above) to be the nation's first black Secretary of Defense based on his experience with logistics in order to help ease the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic and get more vaccines out to the public.  Smart move, right?  Wrong!  Defense exert Michelle Flournoy was the favorite for Defense Secretary, and choosing her would have made her our first female Defense Secretary.  So women's groups are ticked off.  And progressives can't stomach the choice of Austin because he has too many ties to the military-industrial complex.  But guess what - had Biden chosen Flournoy, who's in even deeper with the armaments industry, progressive reaction might have been even more hostile.

The choice of Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense should have pleased black groups, which should have allowed Biden to get outgoing U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) as Attorney General, given Jones' stellar reputation as a defender of civil rights.  Nope - black groups want a black Attorney General, no ifs, ands or buts about it, despite two black Attorneys General having already served under Obama.  And, on top of all that, Austin needs a waiver form Congress to serve as Defense Secretary because he has not been retired form the military long enough - he's only been out of uniform for four years instead of the required seven years.  Given that James Mattis had to be given a waiver to serve as Secretary of Defense only four years ago, many members of Congress are wary of granting another waiver to anyone.  

Maybe Biden should pick a black Agriculture Secretary, which blacks also want, and that would free him to nominate Jones to head the Justice Department.  Instead, he wants to give former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack - whom progressives have identified as being in with the big argibusiness companies - his old job back.  

Representative Marcia Fudge (D-OH), a black woman and also an agricultural expert despite representing an urban district, would have been a better choice for Secretary of Agriculture, but Biden has instead tapped her to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, likely because he figures he needs a black person to run HUD, even though that black person may be less qualified than a white guy who's actually been a big-city mayor and knows how cities are run.  (I wonder if you know who I'm talking about?)  I'll have more on that later . . . and end for now by saying that I'm not pleased about this.

Biden should remember the moral of Aesop's fable "The Man, The Boy and the Donkey."  He who tries to please everybody pleases nobody.