The Return of Rosy Scenario

The editors of the Washington Post have begun their own predictions on the contours of a Biden Administration. Here’s what they predict:

1. Competence would be restored to the senior ranks of government.

Some, such as possible Biden White House chief of staff (and occasional Post contributor) Ronald A. Klain, boast Washington résumés almost as long as Mr. Biden’s. Others, such as vice-presidential candidate Kamala D. Harris, are relative newcomers. The common attribute is a record of accomplishment in public service.

I found the single gravest defect of the Trump Administration was Trump’s inability to attract and manage good staff. While I agree that President Biden would mark a return of the “usual suspects” in government I’m not as optimistic as they that it would be a step in the right direction. I wish they had expanded on Sen. Harris’s accomplishments in office. To me her primary accomplishment appears to be getting elected.

2. The U. S. would rejoin international institutions that the Trump Administration had left.

Mr. Biden would rejoin international organizations and agreements that Mr. Trump renounced, such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord, and he would restore executive-branch protections to “dreamers,” the undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children.

I’m not as convinced as they of the benignity of the Paris accord, which seemed to me largely a cover for China’s excessive emissions. That the emissions of non-signatory U. S. should have decreased while those of signatories Canada and China increased make their view pretty confusing to me.

3. Aid for the unmployed, businesses, and state governments.

If it is not passed by a lame-duck Congress, he would push a long-stalled economic rescue package to support the unemployed, underemployed, businesses and public services struggling to cope with the ever-worsening coronavirus pandemic. He would release evidence-based national coronavirus guidance, ramp up testing and funnel money into safe school reopenings.

While I believe that the Congress has been remiss in refusing to compromise to pass another COVID-19 aid package, I’m not nuts about the primary sticking point to an agreement: the provisions to bail out profligate state governments including that of my own state of Illinois.

4. He would expand the Affordable Care Act.

The past several years have proved the public wants the government to ensure that all Americans have decent health-care coverage; Mr. Biden would build on Obamacare, adding a public option to do that.

Since this has been a major promise during both Mr. Biden’s primary and general election campaigns, it would be quite surprising if he didn’t follow through with it. The major question is whether the Pelosi House will allow him to stop there or will insist on Medicare for All or a similar plan.

5. He would repeal the tax cuts of the last four years.

He would make a down payment on addressing wealth inequality by repealing Mr. Trump’s wasteful tax cuts for the wealthy.

This, too, has been a campaign promise. I’m skeptical that changes in tax policy will do much about wealth inequality or even about income inequality with which it is more closely associated. I think that income inequality is more a consequence of the financialization of the economy and immigration policies which the WaPo says that Mr. Biden supports.

6. Racial healing.

The project of racial healing would long outlast Mr. Biden’s term, because it will take culture change as well as policy reform. But, among other things, he would unleash the Justice Department to once again demand change from deficient police departments; focus on crime prevention rather than incarceration by diverting people with substance abuse or mental health problems into treatment; and collect better crime data so states can develop evidence-based alternatives to warehousing generations of human beings.

I will believe these measures produce “racial healing” when I see it.

7. Return to the status quo ante in foreign policy.

On foreign affairs, Mr. Biden would put the United States back on the side of the good guys: traditional allies who cherish freedom and democracy. Mr. Trump has courted and supported dictators and strongmen across the world. Mr. Biden would call a summit of the world’s democracies to regroup and promote basic liberal values, because having more unfree countries in the world is both a moral and a security threat to the United States.

I’m afraid that this remark reflects a grave misconception on the part of the editors. I do not believe that the U. S. has ever been considered “on the side of the good guys” (not even by the French when we were liberating France from the Germans during WWII) and I’m not actually sure which “good guys” he means. The Germans? The Brits and French with whom we collaborated on bringing down the Libyan government, resulting in a decade of chaos and misery including the return of slave markets there?

And a return to the status quo ante concerns me. I don’t relish the notion of invading other countries as much as the editors apparently do.

In a similar vein at The Hill Albert Hunt riffles through a Rolodex of the usual suspects to speculate on the members of the Biden cabinet:

We can expect a Biden administration, as promised, to be the most diverse in history. There’d be roles for Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren people, important political supporters and campaign aides. There is even talk of a few prominent Republicans, which is dicier than before. One mentioned is former Sen. Jeff Flake, a principled Arizona anti-Trump conservative, one of the most admirable people in public life — but other than maybe a major immigration post, he would be out of sync with a Biden government.

What matters most when facing domestic and foreign crises is who the president surrounds himself with in the major posts: State, Defense, Treasury, Attorney General and the very top White House staff.

Despite that build-up the candidates he singles out tend to be very male and very pale with only a few exceptions. One of those, Susan Rice for Secretary of State, fills me with foreboding. She’s an advocate of the “Responsibility to Protect” which I believe is a ticket for unending unjust war.