There’s speculation that President-elect Joe Biden will use his secretary of Commerce nomination to, as The Hill reports, reach out to the business community — possibly by selecting a Republican. What’s the deal with that?
It’s not unusual to put someone from the other party in the Cabinet; indeed, Democrats have repeatedly nominated Republicans for Defense secretary, and not only after close elections. Commerce might be the least important Cabinet position, at least in a Democratic administration.
In any case, Biden would be fooling himself if he thought that adding a Republican to his administration would buy him goodwill from Republicans in Congress. And any Republican who would be willing to do it would be attacked as a RINO who doesn’t belong in the party in the first place. Nor is it remotely plausible that Republican voters would be more inclined to support Biden because of such a gesture. Even for people who pay close attention to politics, the selection of a Cabinet secretary is a barely noticeable one-day story.
The idea of seeking to build good relations with interest groups is more worthwhile. Most of the task of hiring for the Cabinet and executive branch is about internal party relationships — such as rewarding allies and reassuring groups whose candidate didn’t win the nomination battle.
But even during these polarized times, there are interest groups that are either unaligned with either party, or only loosely aligned. A Trumpist Republican Party has frayed ties with business. While Republicans still offer low taxes, they also have become the party of trade wars, restrictions on immigration, and perhaps even a breakdown in the rule of law, none of which makes the Chamber of Commerce very happy.
Do you think that keeping Democratic groups happy while also reaching out to one outside group that could make some of those Democrats extremely uneasy sounds difficult? Well, that’s why presidents need sophisticated political skills to succeed. The good news is that since secretary of Commerce is a low-stakes choice anyway, it won’t really matter much whether Biden uses it to select a Republican, an ambassador to business or, for that matter, a socialist.
But overall, the question of whether Biden can keep the Democratic Party reasonably unified while perhaps adding new allies will be an important one for the incoming administration.
Bloomberg
