President-Elect Joe Biden is busy assembling his cabinet, and there are some interesting choices. They are a remarkably diverse bunch, racially, ethnically, and LGBTQ+ly, for one thing. One of them is on record saying nasty things about Republicans, which has shocked, shocked! a party where such behavior is completely unknown.
There might be more significant resistance to Biden's choice for Defense, Lloyd Austin II, a retired U.S. Army four-star general, commander of U.S. Central Command until April, 2016. The National Security Act of 1947, which began the process of replacing the Department of War with the Department of Defense, requires that the head of the department not have served in the U.S. military for seven years before assuming the job. Congress waived that provision for Gen. George Marshall in 1950 and Gen. James Mattis in 2017, but members on both sides of the aisle have expressed reservations about yet another waiver.
So some of Biden's other cabinet choices seem more at random. For Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Biden wants former Chief of Staff in the Obama administration Denis McDonough, who has some experience in foreign policy, but not in the military or in health care. Former Gary, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of Biden's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination last winter and one of his best spokesmen on TV in the fall, has been tagged for the Department of Transportation.
Secretary of Transportation is something of a dead-end job as far as political aspirations go. Oh, sure, Liddy Dole tried running for president in 2000 with Transportation Secretary on her résumé, and Andrew Card shows up on cable news now and again. But can you name any others? If you can think of the name of Donald Trump's Secretary of Transportation before reading past this comma, you are probably her husband, Mitch McConnell.
So will my LGBTQ+ continue to be interested in Mayor Pete? Will we ever hear from him again?
Ah, well. The President-Elect is an Amtrak aficionado, so maybe there's still a chance for the Department of Transportation to make news after all.
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