Biden's proposed Cabinet is taking shape with Janet Yellin (Treasury), Tony Blinken (State), others

The Biden Administration announcement for Cabinet and other senior appointments so far seem to reflect his reputation as an institutionalist. In other words, he's picking people with solid formal qualifications for such senior positions.

This transition period is extremely important. These personnel selections will have a huge influence on the policies and priorities his administration actually pursues in office.

Progressives and serious political analysts need to take a critical-minded view of these appointments. Brunch Liberals will simply cheer them all at this point and will scold anyone who isn't just "cheering for the home team". But people who actually care about what Biden's government does, and about and what the Democratic Party does to build popular support or erode it during the next four years, will want to pay closer attention.

Competence does matter. It can be applied to developing and implementing good policies or bad ones. Rahm Emmanuel was competent in his role of Obama's chief of staff. But he tended to apply that competence in service of conservative and pro-corporate positions. He also applied it to trashing progressive base Democrats, who he famously accused of being "f***ing retarded".

Nahal Toosi (Biden turns to familiar faces to grapple with a changed world Politico 11/23/2020) quotes a stuffier diplomatic version of the point:

“You have people who are competent, but from competence to policy there’s always a leap,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States. “Are they going to simply manage the status quo? Are they going to go back — to rewind? Or are they going to be creative — to have an America that’s more cooperative, less imperial?”

Competence also matters in achieving constructive goals in both foreign and domestic policy. Nuclear nonproliferation and climate change are critical international problems. And constructive goals like reviving the Iran nuclear agreement definitely requires people who can handle the complicated diplomatic and technical issues involved. Trump's complete failure with nonproliferation with North Korea is a good illustration of how clown-show diplomacy doesn't achieve what needs to be done.

Heather Cox Richardson mentioned several of Biden's new appointments in her Facebook post of 11/23/2020:

Biden’s nominees are people who have spent long careers inside the government, making them good candidates to rebuild what Trump gutted, beginning with the State Department, which manages our foreign policy. Biden began by naming a secretary of state, a sign to the world that America is back and wants again to be a reliable partner. His pick is Antony Blinken, who served as Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama. Blinken also worked with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden chaired it, and served as Biden’s National Security advisor when he was vice president. He will be an informed, strong voice at State.

The rest of Biden’s candidates show similarly impressive credentials. They also reflect the longstanding Democratic principle that the government should reflect the American people. Biden is proposing Cuban-born Alejandro Mayorkas, a former deputy secretary, to head the Department of Homeland Security. He proposes Avril Haines, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, for Director of National Intelligence, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year veteran of the foreign service, who is Black, for ambassador the United Nations. [my emphasis]

She adds this observation, "Thomas-Greenfield went to college with David Duke, who would go on to become the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and who endorsed Trump for president in both 2016 and 2020. In at least some very important ways, it is a new era in politics, indeed."

Other appointments announced include Janet Yellin as Treasury Secretary, Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser, John Kerry as a special envoy on climate change. Yellin's pick is drawing initial praise from both Wall Street and at least from Democrats with Keynesian economic policy leanings. She's not an austerity zealot. Ben White notes (What the Yellen choice means for Biden and the economy Politico 11/23/2020):

Yellen, widely seen as the obvious choice when Biden teased last week that he had made his pick, is slightly untraditional for Treasury. Her pre-government background came largely as an academic economist and monetary policy expert. The top Treasury slot often goes to people — until now all men — with extensive corporate backgrounds and high-profile international experience.

But Yellen has deep support throughout the Democratic Party — and among many Republicans — even if she was not sufficiently committed to the views of some on the far left. She also commands respect on Wall Street following her widely praised tenure as Fed chair, and before then as the central bank’s vice chair who often represented the Fed behind the scenes in international forums.

In Politico, "not sufficiently committed to the views of some on the far left" is meant as strong praise. And by far left, they likely mean anyone to the left of Rahm Emmanuel.

Paul Krugman is encouraged by Yellin's appointment:

Something I wrote a few years back about both her seriousness and her intellectual honesty. Really looking forward to the Biden era 2/ https://t.co/qzs9lh8agw

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 23, 2020

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss the Yellin pick in this TYT segment of 11/23/2020, Joe Biden Picks Treasury Secretary:

The foreign policy team is solidly liberal establishment, with the substantial positives and negatives of that viewpoint. They will be reluctant to draw down American troops stationed abroad or to reduce the number of military basis. And they will be tempted to undertake more "humanitarian" military interventions.

The American Prospect has been reporting on Tony Blinken this year. Jonathan Guyer wrote back in the summer about the "strategic consultant" world, which involves think tanks that are technically-legally not lobbyists, though de facto they are. Blinken and Michele Flournoy, who is being prominently discussed for Secretary of Defense, headed such a strategic consultancy named WestExec Advisors. (Jonathan Guyer, How Biden’s Foreign-Policy Team Got Rich 07/06/2020) Guyer describes the general political-intellectual-professional environment of the that branch of technically-not-lobbying and how it fits into Joe Biden's foreign-policy background:

[M]any of the people who work closely with Biden are enmeshed in the opaque world of strategic consultancies and by extension a network of the world’s biggest businesses. If they’ve been consulting for corporations with offshore interests, this spells potential conflicts. “One of the biggest gaps in ethics laws is that we don’t require strategic consultants to register as lobbyists,” said Mandy Smithberger of the Project on Government Oversight.

When it comes to foreign affairs, Biden and his advisers are nonideological and mainly transactional. In Obama’s situation room, he sometimes urged restraint, according to people who were there, and sometimes was hawkish. Rather than being associated with a particular school of statecraft or a signature policy accomplishment, Biden is known for his intimacy with world leaders.

Tasked by Obama to end the Iraq War, Biden supported Nouri El-Maliki, the leader he knew, and rescued the Iraqi prime minister’s career even though it ended up fracturing the country. When Maliki narrowly lost in 2010, Biden didn’t give Iraqi political parties time to broker a new coalition. With Biden’s endorsement, Maliki gained a second term; he grew more authoritarian, which is now widely believed to have led to the rise of ISIS. Biden ignored experts who were skeptical of Maliki and preferred to glad-hand. “He came to deal with Iraqi politicians like local political kingpins in Delaware or Pennsylvania,” said Robert Ford, who was deputy ambassador in Baghdad from 2008 to 2010. [my emphasis]

Guyer writes specifically about Blinken's new nomination in What You Need to Know About Tony Blinken 11/23/2020.