The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Picks Women And People Of Color For His Economics And Communications Teams

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

With the American economy on uneven footing as coronavirus cases surge nationwide, President-elect Joe Biden formally announced top members of his incoming economic team on Monday. Plus, the Biden team announced his communications team would be led by seven women.This episode: political correspondent Asma Khalid, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and political correspondent Scott Detrow.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, before we start the show, we have some news. We're hosting a virtual live show next Thursday, December 3rd at 8pm Eastern. We're calling it Politics After Dark. That means we'll talk about the news, of course, but we'll also give you a behind the scenes look at what it's been like to cover this election during the pandemic. And we'll quiz you on your political knowledge too. We've really missed doing live shows, so we hope you'll join us. Head to nprpresents.org to RSVP. Hi, this is Sukriti. And this is Anurub from Lebanon, New Hampshire. We are currently working out from our home gym.

While thinking of the apple pie upstairs. This podcast was recorded at 2.08 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, November 30th. Things might have changed by the time you hear this, including the fate of the apple pie upstairs. Here's the show. That sounds like a great way to spend post-Thanksgiving. Sounds pretty good to me. I finished my pie Sunday. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the Biden transition. I'm Scott Horsley, NPR's chief economics correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I hope you all had a relaxing Thanksgiving weekend, all things considered, given this very strange COVID age that we live in. The president-elect's transition appears to be moving along despite the holiday weekend and despite the fact that the president is still not conceding. Joe Biden announced several new members of his administration. We're going to focus first on

key economic appointments and then look later at his comms team. So let's start with the Treasury Department. Joe Biden plans to nominate the former chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, to head the Treasury Department. And before we dive into exactly who she is and what her job will entail, I just want to acknowledge that it is sort of wild to me that Janet Yellen would be the first woman to ever lead the Treasury Department in its more than 200-year history. Yeah, and women economists, I think, took particular delight in that. The economics profession has not always been super welcoming for women, and Janet Yellen was a trailblazer, has been a trailblazer there. She was also the first Fed chair, right? First female Fed

chair. She was, that's right. And she was also chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. So this will be a trifecta of economic policy positions. And Scott, you know, you mentioned she's held these other top tier jobs, but that, you know, shows us she's clearly experienced. And she's been experienced at handling the economic climate during various financial crises. Can you give us a better sense of her background and what she's going to be bringing into this job? Well, she is a trained economic specialist. As Mara points out, she was the first female Fed chair, and she headed up the Federal Reserve as the U.S. was sort of coming out of the Great Recession. And then she was there at the helm when it began what would turn out to be a

record long period of economic growth. She was known as a dove on the Fed. That is, she was somebody who pushed more on the employment gas pedal than the anti-inflation break. And also, we know that Wally Adeyemo has been nominated to be the deputy secretary of the Treasury. He would be the first African-American man nominated to that position. You know, it's worth pointing out that the Treasury Department will have a lot of attention and a lot of eyes on it because this White House is going to be tasked with bringing the economy back after the pandemic. And Scott, do we have a sense of, you know, what some of these appointments might tell us about how the Biden team is thinking about approaching the recovery, especially,

let's say, if they don't have a lot of, you know, traction or a lot of support and cooperation from Congress? Yes, that's right. I mean, Adyemo, we should say, first of all, is another veteran. He served in the Obama administration where he had positions of responsibility for international economics. And, of course, Janet Yellen also got around as Fed be a fair amount of economic diplomacy on the world stage as the U.S. tries to push for a coordinated recovery around the globe. We're already seeing, for example, China well on the way to recovery after being the first country hit by the pandemic. But the expiration of support on the fiscal side, that is, in direct spending by the Congress, that aid is kind of running out now. More is going to run out at the end of the year, and Congress has been slow about re-upping for that.

Both the president-elect and Janet Yellen and the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, have all been urging Congress to do more, to say, look, we're not out of the woods yet. In fact, with the infection surging and new limits on economic activity, we could be heading for a double dip in the early part of the new year. So there's certainly demand for more federal aid, whether Congress comes through with it, and in particular, whether the Republican-led Senate comes through with it, remains to be seen. The other thing that strikes me about these picks is that they really do communicate a clear vision. Of course, there's a lot of diversity. Biden said he wants a cabinet that looks like America, a lot of experience, so he values

experience. And Heather Boucher, one of the picks for the Council of Economic Advisors, actually ran an organization called the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. So these are people who are not redistributionists. They understand that you can't have broadly shared prosperity without growth. And I think that's an important signal that he's sending. And in a statement announcing these picks, the president-elect talked about that. The challenge here is not only to deal with the immediate economic problems posed by the pandemic, but also ensure that as we do recover, that we do so in a way that helps those in the middle of the economic ladder and in the lower rungs of the economic ladder. And Mara's right. That's something that most of these picks have spent their careers working for.

Cecilia Rouse, who's going to head up the Council of Economic Advisors, she's another veteran of the Obama administration and the Clinton administration. She's currently a dean at Princeton University. And as an academic economist, a lot of her focus has also been on dealing with structural barriers that keep some people from sharing in economic prosperity. And she's another first. Yeah. And Scott, she would be the first African-American woman to head up the Council of Economic Advisors. Isn't that right? That's right. And one of only a handful of women who built that post. That's right. Including Janet Yellen. Janet Yellen. And there have been other women. She's done everything. That's right. Exactly. And Biden

also plans to nominate Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget. My understanding is she would be, if confirmed, the first woman of color to head the OMB. So, I mean, to your point, Mara, there certainly is this vision of selecting various people who represent historic firsts throughout some of the appointment and nomination decisions that they've announced. Absolutely. And speaking of Neera Tanden, she is the first pick who has gotten any kind of strong pushback from the Senate. She is the head of the Center for American Progress, a kind of center-left think tank. She's been a top advisor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But a spokesman for Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas tweeted that she has, quote, zero chance of being confirmed. So it's possible that Tandon will be the first big fight with Congress if Republicans retain their majority in January.

What's their concern with her? She's a partisan. She's made some comments about Republican senators. But I also think this is a power game and Republican senators are expected to try to scuttle at least one of Biden's picks. They could block them all if they have the majority. If they wanted a scorched earth policy, a kind of Merrick Garland times 10, they could block them all. But they certainly are going to try to block one or two. All right, Scott, well, we're going to let you go for now. Thank you, as always, for joining us on the pod. Great to be with you. And we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we'll talk more about Biden's communications team. What do John Legend,

Jennifer Lopez, and celebrity chef Samin Nosrat all have in common? I've interviewed them. Join me, Sam Sanders, every week as I talk with people in the culture who deserve your attention. Subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back and we now have a new Scott with us. Hey there, Scott Detrow. Hello there. How's it going? So on Sunday, Joe Biden announced several members of his White House communications team. All the names that were announced are women. So Scott, you know, run us

through who's on that list and maybe also the significance of hearing that so many of these people are all women. Yeah, a lot of familiar names here, familiar both from the Biden campaign and also from the Obama White House. And, you know, that's really the theme for all of the positions being filled in the Biden administration so far. Just to list a few of the more high profile positions, Kate Bedingfield is going to be White House communications director. She was the communications director for the Biden campaign. Jen Psaki is going to be the White House press secretary. She was the White House communications director at the end of the Obama administration.

She was also for a while the State Department spokeswoman. To me, I don't know, that seems like an even harder job than White House press secretary, just doing world briefings every single day. Karine Jean-Pierre is going to be deputy press secretary. And another familiar name from the campaign trail, Simone Sanders, who was a senior advisor to Biden and was a prominent spokesperson for him throughout the campaign. She is going to be a senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris's chief spokesperson.

And yeah, a lot is being made of the fact that this is an all-woman communication staff, at least the names that have been announced so far, the top-level names. Sure. I mean, obviously, the Trump administration, every press secretary after Sean Spicer has been a woman. But the Biden campaign and now incoming administration has worked very hard to have a diverse slate of people, you know, a lot of women being named to prominent positions, a lot of people of color. And and this is just another example of that. And Biden, Biden actually said that this could have been him making a pointed contrast with

Trump. But he said, communicating truthfully is one of a president's most important duties. And here are the people who are going to be doing that. And I'm wondering if compared to Trump, whether we will see relatively more of Biden's spokespeople and less of Biden. I mean, I think that's an excellent question, right? And you do wonder from just given how the campaign was handled as well, if there are going to be expectations that are different of what the public wants, because President Trump has so changed the metrics of what's like normal communication. I mean, I think, and you've said this over, you know, the course of many podcasts, Mara, that in some ways, President Trump was his sole spokesman.

He was the one who liked to be in charge of communicating whatever the message of the day was. And so he was famous for doing these Q&As with the press out on the tarmac before his plane would be taking off to somewhere. And towards the end of the campaign cycle, we began to see Joe Biden do tarmac gaggles. And yes, you know, each president sets his own standard for how much he wants to communicate with the press. Donald Trump broke the mold. As you said, he was his own press secretary, communications director. He was extremely accessible. We knew what he was thinking within seconds of him thinking it and he talked to the press all the time. Whether that makes the entire country expect that and demand that, I don't think so. I think what will be interesting to me is the relationship with the press. Every president that I've covered uses the press as a foil, but no one has elevated the antagonism between the press

corps and the White House to the level that Trump did. I think you're going to see a more typical relationship where the press spokespeople try to provide information in an accurate manner while they're also pushing the administration's message. I mean, Asma, you and I saw this so many times covering the campaign. I think we can expect that when the Biden White House wants to deliver a message, it will be a message that has been thought over, written out, kind of plotted from A to Z before the press is told it. when he would campaign, when he would give appearances, they were often relatively limited. He would talk to us getting on and off his airplane, but most of those really lasted two or three minutes at a time. I think maybe there was one on election day, it went like over 10 minutes, and that was like the longest by far. That's really unusual, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's going to be different. And by and large, Joe Biden ran the entire scope of his campaign was, I will be different than Donald Trump.

And I think this will be another example of that. You know, that being said, Biden did definitely do longer form press conferences periodically throughout the campaign. These were, you know, shorter, more sort of organized, regulated affairs where you might have like four or five back and forth questions from reporters to Joe Biden. What Scott just said is a really important point. This is a transition and a slate of appointments that tells you that Joe Biden has thought things through. Donald Trump governed from his gut and his impulse. But these are picks that have been designed to send a message to an advance an agenda. And this is a whole different way of approaching governing. All right, well, that is a wrap for today. And a reminder that we have a live event coming up this week. I guess it's live over the internet, not live in person. But

please join us. It will be December 3rd at 8pm. You can sign up at nprpresents.org. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the Biden transition. I'm Scottma Khalid. I'm covering the Biden transition. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm also covering the Biden transition. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And as always, thank you for listening to the NPR politics podcast.