Why One Biden Pick Towers Over Others As Problematic

In the time between the presidential election and the presidential inaugural, a favorite Washington guessing game is Biden cabinet appointments.

With a twist: not only who makes the cut, but who can cut it if facing a hostile Republican Senate deciding his or her fate.

This is a dynamic an incoming president hasn’t faced – a Senate controlled by the loyal opposition – since George H.W. Bush took the presidential oath in 1989. And it’s a lesson from that year that’s worth remembering as we head into 2021.

Three decades ago, Bush 41 nominated the late John Tower, a former U.S. Senator (and, like Bush, a Texan), to serve as his Secretary of State. On paper, it added up. Tower had been a member of the Senate from the beginning of the Kennedy Administration through the end of the Ronald Reagan’s first term (translation: he’d sail through on professional courtesy alone). Bonus added: as a former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tower had the requisite policy chops.

But then reality set in for the new president and his nominee. Washington was abuzz with troubling rumors about Tower – in the time during and after his Senate tenure, talk of and FBI investigations into allegations of chronic drinking and womanizing and possible conflicts of interests with defense contractors.

In the end, Tower would go down, courtesy of a mostly partisan 53-47 vote. Ironically, Tower’s rejection opened the door for Dick Cheney, then a congressman, to become Bush’s Defense Secretary – one of the reasons why Cheney ended up as Bush 43’s vice president years later.

Such a dismissal may have seemed surprising at the time, considering that Tower was a Senate alum and a Washington regular (while many cabinet selections have withdrawn their nominations before facing Senate action, only two have been rejected, in floor votes, in the past 60 years).

Then again, Tower’s nomination came less than two years after the Bork nomination kerfuffle and nearly three years before the spectacle that was Clarence Thomas’ Senate confirmation process. Perhaps the ground was shifting as far as nominations go, with Tower being the overlooked middle child when compared to the more spectacular Bork and Thomas Supreme Court battles. 

Will one of Biden’s nominees suffer the same fate as John Tower?

Here are three possibilities, in alphabetical order.

Xavier Becerra. California’s State Attorney General is Biden’s pick for health secretary. That said, his California resume will raise issues with some Senate Republicans.

Becerra has sued the Trump Administration on California’s behalf more than 100 times (he reached the century mark in August). And he defended the Golden State when the Trump Administration sued over sanctuary protections for undocumented residents.

Watch for Becerra’s confirmation battle – to the extent that it’s a partisan wrangle – to become a referendum on illegal immigration. That will include comments he made last year in favor of decriminalizing illegal border-crossing (“They are not criminals,” Becerra told HuffPost last year. “They haven’t committed a crime against someone, and they are not acting violently or in a way that’s harmful to people. And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.”).

Patrick Gaspard. He may or may not end as Biden’s Labor pick, but if Gaspard gets the nod then another Republican bete noire enters the confirmation conversation: George Soros.

Gaspard, a former Obama White House political director and U.S. ambassador to South Africa, recently stepped down as president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

The GOP obsession with Soros? In addition to underwriting Democrats and progressive caucuses, the Hungarian-born investor shows up in all sorts of wild conspiracy theories ranging from his orchestrating immigration caravans to egging on white-supremacist marches. 

An added plot twist to a Gaspard nomination: how does it sit with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who reportedly wants the job? 

Neera Tanden. The Republican reaction when it was revealed that the head of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank was Biden’s choice for the budget-writing OMB: OMG, with a spokesman for Texas Sen. John Cornyn saying she has “zero chance” of confirmation.

Tanden’s problem(s): saying no to CAP donors looking for budgetary favors; spreading conspiracy theories that Russian hackers managed to change Hillary Clinton votes to Trump; and habitually taking to Twitter to share odious takes on Republicans and Republican senators, only to remove over 1,000 potentially troublesome tweets once she was offered the Office of Management and Budget post.  

What kind of tweets, you might ask?

Referring to failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore: “The Republican party is gleefully supporting an alleged child molester. And everyone who gives money to the RNC is doing the same.“

About the current occupant of the Oval Office: “Trump just called a black woman a dog and about 80% of the GOP don’t think he’s a racist.” Adding: “the whole party needs to be defeated.”

And this, about Maine Sen. Susan Collins, in reference to her Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford: “Susan Collins’ terrible treatment of Dr. Ford should haunt Collins the rest of her days.” She also tweeted: “Why do people take Susan Collins’ statements that she was undecided seriously? Like if you saw Brett Kavanaugh’s attack on other Senators as qualifying to be on the Supreme Court, this was never a real question for you.”

I don’t cheer for nominees to lose their jobs. But there is such a thing as setting an example – and putting other Washington insiders on notice. In this case, for engaging in Twitter thuggery. 

If John Tower’s indiscretions – drinking, womanizing, dubious ethics – were grounds for disqualification in 1989, perhaps Neera Tanden does the future of political discourse a favor if the Senate were to conclude that her Twitter shenanigans bar her from serving a president.

Yes, no crime was committed by Tanden in posting what she did. But it’s a political infraction of a different kind – adding more venom to an already toxic political climate. And if you want to defend what she’s been tweeting the past several years, ask yourself: why did she suddenly decide that over 1,000 examples of her finest work should be relegated to the trash bin?

It’s something we learned in last month’s election: bad behavior and egregiously obnoxious tweeting can carry with it a political price. If that standard applies to a sitting president, why not the same for a president-elect’s would-be budget director?

Maybe that question is posed to Neera Tanden in her confirmation hearing.

Unless a Republican-controlled Senate convinces her: don’t bother showing up. 

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