Norms.
Alleged pick, I should say. It was widely reported last night that retired Gen. Lloyd Austin is his choice but Sleepy Joe hasn’t confirmed it yet. And maybe there’s a reason for that. Austin is a controversial selection, as we’re about to see. Maybe this was a trial balloon from Team Biden, leaking Austin’s name to see how congressional Democrats would react. If the feedback was bad — and it’s been fairly bad — Biden could always turn around and nominate one of the other shortlisters, Michele Flournoy or Jeh Johnson, instead. On the other hand, according to Politico, Biden himself offered Austin the job on Sunday and Austin accepted. That sounds like more than a trial balloon. Why Austin instead of Flournoy or Johnson? A few reasons. First, African-American lawmakers have been lobbying Biden to appoint more black officials to his cabinet. Biden’s been considering Deval Patrick for Attorney General but the expectation is that job will go to Sally Yates, Doug Jones, or Lisa Monaco, all of whom are white. Johnson, like Austin, is African-American but he’s “been criticized for his record on expanding family detention [as DHS chief] and accelerating deportations, as well as approving hundreds of drone strikes against suspected terrorists that killed civilians.” He’s too much of a hawk, and a border hawk, to make progressives happy. As for Flournoy, she’d be the first woman defense secretary in U.S. history. But she’s white, and she never built the sort of relationship with Biden that Austin did when she worked for Obama’s defense department. “Biden… trusts Austin, as they worked together when Biden served as vice president and had a large foreign policy portfolio,” Politico noted. That’s in keeping with Biden’s general approach to appointments: He wants people generally whom he knows well and is comfortable with, like Tony Blinken. Austin was the commanding general in Iraq during Obama’s first term and the head of CENTCOM in his second. He and Sleepy Joe have worked together for years. So what’s the problem with the pick? As I say, Austin is a retired military officer — and under U.S. law, retired officers aren’t eligible to be defense secretary until they’ve been retired for seven years. Austin’s been retired for four. In order to serve, he’ll need the same sort of waiver that James Mattis received from Congress before he was appointed defense secretary by Trump in 2017. Mattis was only the second retired general to ever receive that waiver; George Marshall was the first, nearly 70 years before. Now here we are with Biden requesting the same sort of exemption for his guy even though he has two perfectly acceptable alternatives in Flournoy and Johnson. In other words, after running an entire presidential campaign vowing to restore “norms” to Washington, Sleepy Joe is about to follow Trump’s lead by busting one before he’s sworn in. Lots of people are unhappy about it this morning, and not all are Republicans. If Biden wants to deemphasize the military, nominating a 4 star so recently retired that he needs a congressional waiver to serve sends the opposite message.2/ Rosa Brooks (@brooks_rosa) December 8,2020 Brooks is a law professor who used to work for Obama’s defense department. If you’re thinking “Who cares what she thinks?”, try this on instead: I have deep respect for Gen. Lloyd Austin. We worked together when he commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, when he was vice chief of the Army, and when he was the CENTCOM commander. But choosing another recently retired general to serve in a role designed for a civilian just feels off. — Rep. Elissa Slotkin (@RepSlotkin) December 8,2020 And after the last 4 years, civil-military relations at the Pentagon definitely need to be rebalanced.
