In normal times, I’d say yes, a few cabinet posts and ambassador positions should be held by members of the loyal opposition. But we no longer have a loyal opposition. The Republican Party is now a terrorist organization, bent on bringing forth a MAGA dictatorship by violence if need be. If and when the fever breaks and the party is either dissolved or comes to its senses, then Democrats can consider working with them.
I think Romney and Cheney and Kinzinger qualify.
So we’re making Harris cabinet appointments already.
Trump’s cabinet 2.0 has been the subject of discussion for weeks and months, so no biggie.
I think we can agree anything Trump did was out of the norm. And I don’t think we should be setting practices by Trump’s actions.
Probably, but it highlights the contrast and shows that Dems want collaborative government and are open to bipartisanship.
I wouldn’t necessarily need them to be helpful to her campaign, just reasonable conservatives in the old mold that have been less obstructive and shown integrity and ethics. I know that makes for a short list. That’s why I’m asking for opinions.
Romney is an example of the type. Adam Kinzinger is another. I feel Liz Cheney deserves some recognition for standing up to Trump and the MAGA crowd, but I’m not sure what role would work. All the of them are currently pariahs in the Rep Party now, so they don’t have much to lose.
Those are the ones I’m talking about. I know there aren’t many.
It signals putting America over Party, it shows openness to bipartisanship, it rewards conservatives that are cooperative and signals what the norms should be. It’s all about finding the right opposition to reward, and the right role where they would be a good fit and be able to follow administration policies, but their own agendas.
Geez, I can’t believe I’m having to explain that here.
As I said in the OP, they are already doing it for real. This is supposed to be for “fun”.
She’s so solidly a Republican except for the Jan 6th stuff, I’d just give her an ambassadorship rather than put her in the Cabinet to fight me everyday.
I haven’t heard that candidate Harris is already weighing cabinet appointments, but I’d love to read any articles about it.
If they have qualifications to do the job, then it’s worth a look. But we don’t need token appointments. However, if they are carrying water for “The Big Lie” then I’ll pass. It’s a simple test.
Why wouldn’t she just keep Director Wray (nb. a Republican, Trump appointee, term limit is 2027)? Are there plans to dismiss him? Is he planning on retiring?
Won’t a President Harris keep the entire Biden-Harris administration? At this stage, why would she alienate the base by distancing herself from Biden?
If elected, she will certainly appoint individuals as vacancies arrive. But how can we speculate before knowing the vacancy? Maybe I’m missing the point of this thread.
~Max
At the expense of sounding over-dramatic, I wouldn’t keep a potential enemy that close. And a lot of Biden’s team signed up to work for him. Replacing some of them at least signal that she’s moving in a different direction.
And yet, Director Wray is the director of the FBI. And he isn’t exactly a team player for Trump.
Which is a bad signal to send right after Biden passed the torch.
~Max
Agree 100%. It used to be that there wasn’t a particularly Democratic or Republican way to be director of many federal departments and bureaus. For now, it still is generally. The FBI goes after corruption whoever’s committing it, NOAA and the Weather Service collect measurements and collate them into forecasts. But in the era of Project 2025, every federal agency is the object of politicization and subversion by the Grand MAGA Party.
When it comes to Republicans in a Dem administration, the opposite of LBJ’s maxim is correct: better they be outside the tent pissing in (critiquing, or more likely insulting, Dem officials) than inside the tent pissing out (screwing up policy and implementation out in the world).
Let’s please stop lionizing (‘lionessing’? ‘lionessizing’?) Liz Cheney for her purely self-serving act of not towing the MAGA line and virtually fellating Donald Trump. Not only her politics but her express and vigorous defense of her father’s neoconservative, pro-corporate policies (and clear willingness to continue them should she ever be elected to a higher office) make her just as ethically bankrupt and morally odious as Trump, just not in such an obviously proto-fascistic way. Liz Cheney will do fine for herself appearing on Fox News and MSNBC as the archetypal voice of pragmatic, ‘balanced’ conservatism.
If Harris ‘needs’ to put some conservative personalities in Cabinet roles or ambassadorships there are plenty of actually honest (more or less) conservatives who have left the political field in the wake of the Tea Party and Trumpism. But except for the sake of appealing to a counter-MAGA movement, I don’t see the need for it; there are already plenty of ‘Center Right’ voices right within the ranks of Democrats, and the last thing we need is a repeat of the Bill Clinton era where he leaned so hard into showing that he could also be ‘tough on crime’ and against ‘the welfare state’ (not to mention heavily into dismantling regulation and loving up Big Corporate donors) that he basically became an honorary Reagan.
Stranger
Yes, he is. So? I still wouldn’t trust him. Again, maybe I’m over-dramatic.
There has never been a Democrat head the FBI in the agency’s history. That needs to change.
I’m of mixed feelings about giving out ambassadorships as political rewards. For some, in countries that are already stanch allies, or that are relatively unimportant on the geopolitical stage, sure, it’s an easy job that doesn’t really need to do much, so go ahead. But China? That’s the most powerful country in the world, outside of the US, and a country with which we have an extraordinarily complicated relationship. The ambassador to China absolutely must be someone with extensive diplomatic experience, who’s intimately familiar with the culture and politics of China and the rest of Asia, and who is completely in line with the President’s foreign policy.
There’s almost always some churn in the cabinet after an election. Doing a high-profile, high-stress job like that takes a toll, and I suspect at least a few will want to step down. There may also be shuffles, when Harris thinks a person would be better for her in a different position. So there’s lots of opportunities for change, without looking like she’s “cleaning house” after Biden is out of office.
When you wrote that you wouldn’t keep him “that close”, I assumed you meant you would prefer he was dismissed. My point is that he has actually served the Biden administration for three and a half years so far, without being dismissed. In fact Biden promised to keep Director Wray on during the 2020 campaign, in an explicit move to restore the political independence of the FBI following the Trump era.
~Max
If Director Wray serves his full term, the next President will appoint his replacement in 2027.
~Max