Biden Cabinet near complete but hundreds of jobs still open

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s Cabinet is nearly complete with the confirmation of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Monday. But the work of building his administration is just beginning, as Biden has hundreds of key presidential appointments to make to fill out the federal government.

The process of building out a government, according to Paul Light, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is “nasty, brutish, and not at all short.”

Biden has about 1,250 federal positions that require Senate confirmation, ranging from the head of the obscure Railroad Retirement Board to more urgent department positions such as assistant and deputy secretaries. Of the 790 being tracked by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan good-government group, 23 appointees have been confirmed by the Senate, 39 are being considered by the Senate, and 466 positions have no named nominee.

According to Max Stier, president and CEO of the partnership, filling out those key posts will likely take the better part of the year — and those vacancies have real-world consequences.

Many agencies, he said, have various sections “that have leadership that really runs that specific component,” Stier said.

Overall, the pace is slower than that under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as the Biden team was hamstrung from the start because of what they said was a lack of cooperation from Trump administration officials throughout the transition.

Senate Democrats did not win a majority of seats in the chamber until the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff elections, and then it took nearly a month for Democratic and Republican leadership to agree on a resolution governing the organization of the chamber, which further delayed committee work.

Democrats privately acknowledge that Trump’s second impeachment trial also slowed down the process.(emphasis added)

There is a parallel to the Smartest Guy in the Room Syndrome, which is The Most Loyal Guy in the Room Syndrome. Sadly, I believe this is Trump's Achilles.

There were several stories released recently about how DJT Lost the White House by a guy Patrick Byrne, who was the CEO of Overstocked.com. Byrne, if you read about him, came from wealth (his Dad basically founded Geico), has a number of degrees, is a committed libertarian, and blockchain fanatic. He may be on the spectrum, he is certainly full of himself, and I believe he's prone to embellishment. He also may be brilliant AND telling the truth (for the most part).

If you read "All the President's Teams" and "Crashing the White House" (admittedly, it's a big/appx 1 hour investment of your life but I think it's worth it) a picture emerges of a Trump who knew he was cheated, and wanted fighters. Trump's inner circle was peopled with folks who Trump trusted, family friends, who had been with him for years, etc. That is perfectly legit, understandable, and probably not a bad way to make a few billion. However, these people (if you believe even 2/3 of what Byrne writes) were incompetent (Rudy) who hired incompetent people and had basically aged out years ago but hadnt been released by Trump, or were now more interested in their next gig and less interested in defending Trump (Meadows and Cipollone).

And yet Trump wouldn't let these guys go. Now, I'm not saying Powell was the right woman for the job (I think she's got her own bag of issues) or that Byrne's approach of impounding machines etc was riskless. But, from every AG Trump picked to other personnel decisions and even a few of his family members, Trump has displayed an uncanny knack for picking the Loyal but Wrong Guy or Gal for the Job.

It happens, and I get it. I'm not stunned. But if there IS a similarity between Trump and Obama, it's that their Blind Spots are what limited them from doing more. Obama, for having 8 years to fundamentally transform America, really got Obamacare and that's about it...it coulda been MUCH worse but he was so smaaaaaht that he probably rejected a zillion ideas because they weren't his or "perfect." Trump could still be President if he'd had some young, hungry and sharp people who anticipated irregularities and nipped them in the bud vs waiting after the fact for a drunk and hair dye-sweating Rudy to bumble through legal proceedings that failed.

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