By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
There are seemingly countless ways to measure why Joe Biden’s election as president will be vastly superior to Donald Trump’s election four (oh, so long) years ago.
One of them likely will be the quality of the individuals with whom the new president will surround himself.
Does anyone, for instance, really expect Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate to confirm the selection of a Cabinet secretary? That’s what happened when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos faced the Senate at the beginning of Trump’s term.
Do you think President Biden is going to rely on family members with no government experience to, oh, work on Middle East peace, or perform other myriad foreign-policy tasks? That’s what we’ve had with presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at the helm of Daddy-in-law Trump’s foreign policy apparatus.
Is there a chance that President Biden is going to install his daughter Ashley as a “senior policy adviser”?
The difference between Trump and Biden cannot be more stark than in examining their pre-presidential experience. Trump came from the world of business and entertainment. Biden is steeped in government, public policy and public service.
Trump had zero government connections when he took office; Biden’s address book is chock full of them.
With all that laid out there, I look forward to watching the president-elect choose his team and assessing the quality of its members. I also look forward to evaluating them on the basis of their experience in government or whatever policy the president will ask them to oversee.
The team that is exiting the scene has been sorely lacking in the know-how required to operate a massive federal government.