What Biden Could Learn From Truman

Ther e’s a simple, politically smart way that Joe Biden can keep his victory speech promise to “listen to each other again [and] stop treating our opponents as enemies.” He should place a handful of conservative and libertarian-leaning advisors in appointed roles that have “soft” influence rather than formal policy-making authority. Doing so would have far lower political costs than putting Republicans in charge of mammoth federal departments and agencies while providing real dividends for both national unity and the president’s agenda.

In recent years, many presidential efforts to “reach out” have involved appointing a few tokens who don’t share the president’s party affiliation in technocratic roles overseeing sizeable parts of the federal apparatus. Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush had kept one member of their predecessor’s cabinet and even Donald Trump promoted an Obama administration holdover—VA official David Shulkin—to serve as his first Secretary of Veterans Affairs. And, while some cabinet appointees not from the president’s party such as Obama’s first Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, a longtime Republican congressman and Kennedy-Johnson Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, a veteran Eisenhower official, have served ably, not all have. Many recent other-party appointees in cabinet-level jobs had short, stormy tenures like those of Shulkin under Trump, Obama Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and first-ever Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger under Jimmy Carter who had been Defense Secretary and CIA Director under Republicans. Read Full Article »