A “Meg Whitman” type at the Commerce Department? No thanks.
23 Power LinePower Lineby Paul Mirengoff
I had to chuckle at this line from an article in Axios:
While Biden again promised Monday night to be a “president for all Americans,” his team hasn’t decided on a strategy to convince some of the 74 million Trump voters he will address their issues.
There’s no need for a strategy. We are convinced that Biden will address Trump-voter issues.
He will address all of them — from China and Iran, to immigration and policing, to judicial nominees, guns, and religious freedom. He will address them in ways we hate.
The Axios article is called “Biden eyes last-minute Republican pick” for his cabinet. It used to be customary for presidents to appoint a token member of the other party to lead a Cabinet level department.
President Trump declined to do so. However, Gary Cohn, his first director of the National Economic Council, was a registered Democrat. And Cohn’s post was far more consequential than Secretary of Commerce — the position Biden reportedly is thinking about filling with a Republican.
Axios suggests that Biden might nominate a “Meg Whitman type” to lead the Commerce Department. Whitman backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and called Trump a demagogue.
If Biden and his advisers think that putting a Meg Whitman type, or even a Republican more favorably disposed to Trump, in the Cabinet will create political capital, they are dreaming. If they think it will convince more than a handful of Trump’s 74 million voters that Biden will address their issues in a remotely satisfactory way, they are hallucinating.
STEVE adds: I was once seated at a small dinner with Meg Whitman back in 2011, right after she had lost the California governor’s race to Jerry Brown after spending something like $150 million of her own money. She bemoaned that she “couldn’t get her message out.” I was gobsmacked, but too polite to say the obvious: anyone who spent $150 million and “couldn’t get their message out” probably didn’t have a message. So she’s probably perfect for a Biden cabinet. Does anyone actually care about the Dept. of Commerce anyway?
The next day I spotted her in an airport flying commercial all the way across the country. My goodness—she spent so much she couldn’t afford to fly private any more. |
