538 "The Cabinet Appointments That Really Matter In The Incoming Biden Administration"
And which media rumors you should probably ignore.
By Perry Bacon Jr.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-cabinet-appointments-that-really-matter-in-the-incoming-biden-administration/
Presidential transitions result in a lot of very inside-the-Beltway stories — an endless stream of leaks and counterleaks that are mainly about some of the world’s most ambitious people jockeying for jobs. Oy. But the transition itself is still an important story.
Who staffs the government matters, and it matters even more when the nation is in its ninth month of struggling to deal with a pandemic. And sometimes the results of all that jockeying are crucial. Imagine how history might have unfolded if President Barack Obama had not tapped Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state — or if President Trump had chosen Mitt Romney, who he courted but ultimately rejected for the role of top diplomat and who four years later became the only GOP senator to support Trump’s removal from office?
Some slots are already filled, with Biden naming a senior team of White House advisers that includes his longtime aide Ron Klain as chief of staff, his campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, as a deputy chief of staff, and Rep. Cedric Richmond, one of Biden’s prominent Black supporters during the campaign, as a senior adviser.
But there are a lot of jobs still to be filled (around 4,000). So here’s FiveThirtyEight’s guide to the transition process:
Many of the rumors about who will get what job won’t turn out to be true — and sometimes that misdirection is intentional. The transition process is a perfect opportunity for:
Reporters to flatter sources by suggesting those sources should be considered for major jobs.
Team Biden to float someone’s name to flatter him or her.
A person who wants to be considered for a key job to float his or her own name.
Other constituencies in the Democratic Party to push their preferred choices.
Many of the stories about who will get various jobs in the administration are full of unnamed sources. And those stories often say Biden is “considering” someone, but we have no idea how serious that consideration really is.
snip - kind of long, worth a read
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