White House Diversity

Joe Biden is highlighting how he has selected a diverse Cabinet - possibly the most diverse Cabinet in U.S. presidential history ever - as he prepares to move into the White House in 2021.  But what if Biden had assumed the Presidency earlier?

In an alternate universe where things turned out differently, Joe Biden ran for President in 1988 and won.  He remembered to attribute Neil Kinnock in comments he made at a debate, he avoided a plagiarism scandal, and he did not have a brain aneurysm later on.  Rather, he won the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination and beat Republican nominee George H.W. Bush in November, succeeding Ronald Reagan (who like Trump was dismissed as a showman who believed his own lies).  In 1989, would Biden have been compelled to appoint a diverse Cabinet?

I would say yes.  Because in the 1980s, the Hispanic and Asian populations were growing much faster than the white population, Los Angeles County in California went minority-majority, and blacks were demonstrating their increased political power with Jesse Jackson's two presidential campaigns.   Bear in mind that Bill Clinton, who was elected President four years after Biden wasn't, was very front and center about assembling a Cabinet that "looked like America," and he ended up nominating the least white and least male Cabinet in history up to that point.  Maybe Biden's incoming Cabinet is more diverse than Bill Clinton's original Cabinet, but Clinton was the first President to make racial and ethnic diversity a standard for presidential appointments.  (Republicans usually have a standard of geographic diversity for presidential appointments - Bob Dole famously went into President-elect Reagan's office and showed him a map to remind Reagan to appoint a Cabinet secretary from the Midwest.  As for the very first Republican presidential Cabinet of 1861, Lincoln selected a Cabinet representing every state or region of what was left of the Union - except New Jersey, which was heavily Democratic.)   

Ah - but would Biden have selected a female running mate in 1988?  That's a trickier question to answer.  Walter Mondale had chosen Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984, and the Democratic ticket went down to a  49-state defeat.  Maybe Ferraro's gender - or the fact that, like Mario Cuomo, who had often been touted as a presidential possibility, she was an Italian from Queens - had something to do with the Democrats' loss, but the bigger reasons for Mondale's loss were because President Reagan was presiding over a seemingly great economy, a booming stock market, and a patriotic fervor stoked by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.  Besides, the Mondale-Ferraro ticket featured two Northern liberals and so did not adequately balance the ticket.

Gerald Ford opined in 1984 that the Democratic nomination of Ferraro for Vice President would pressure both parties to select a woman for the Vice Presidency in 1988.  He was wrong, of course, but maybe not as wrong as we might be if we automatically think that Biden wouldn't have picked a female running mate in 1988.  Michael Dukakis chose Lloyd Bentsen to balance the ticket because Bentsen was everything Dukakis was not - Southern , moderate, a Washington insider, and born of northern European stock.  George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle to shore up the Reagan coalition.  If any women had met either nominee's objectives, a woman might have been nominated for Vice President as well.  Biden cold have just as easily chosen Ann Richards, who was Biden's opposite in geography, temperament, and Washington connections, though she was then just the Texas state treasurer and not the governor just yet.

One thing is certain - Biden would not have chosen Kamala Harris.  Not only was she unknown, she was 24 years old and thus too young to serve as Vice President.

P.S.  As far as the Cabinet is concerned, I am also certain that, had he been elected President in 1988, Biden would not have considered Gary Hart, who as William Greider had accurately predicted, would give up his revived presidential campaign "partly in the mistaken notion that he can still become somebody's Secretary of State," for that very position.  And not because he's a white male.