\”In-Depth\” takes a closer look at the \”revolving door\” phenomenon in Washington through government changes

Source: Global Times

[Global Times reporter Lin Rishengyuan, Tao short room, Ding Yuqing, Li Sikun] US President-elect Biden has recently announced the list of future team candidates, and the outside world has seen that a large number of them The people of the Obama era. With the United States as a whole in a relatively chaotic situation, the return of these experienced people has made many people feel reassured, but some have also noticed that the political lobbying industry, the \”fourth center of power\” in the United States, may be back again. Many familiar faces have close ties with lobbying groups, and one consulting company was even called a \”company waiting to be appointed to the cabinet.\” Four years ago, Trump stirred up Washington when he vowed to “drain the swamp,” but instead assembled the “richest cabinet” in American history. These point directly to a typical political ecology in the United States – the \”revolving door\”, that is, the phenomenon of public officials serving back and forth between government agencies and private organizations. By sorting out the backgrounds and whereabouts of some key members of the Biden and Trump teams, Global Times reporters got a glimpse into the complex network of interests in Washington\’s \”swamp.\”

Start with \”Companies in Waiting\”

\”As the name of our agency suggests, we are concerned about \’revolving door\’ recruitment , and Brian Deese’s relationship with BlackRock (also translated as Black Rock) makes it unlikely that the federal government will control the company,” Jeff Hauser, founder of the American non-profit organization “Revolving Door Project” said recently. .
Brian Deese here was a senior adviser to the White House during the Obama era. After Obama\’s term ended, Deese served as a senior executive at the global investment management giant BlackRock. According to US media reports, US President-elect Biden plans to nominate him to serve as the extremely critical director of the White House National Economic Council. But some progressive groups have warned against hiring Deese for a White House job given his current work in the financial industry.

As Biden continues to announce his new team candidates, the backgrounds of some people on the list have attracted special attention from public opinion. After Biden announced the first wave of cabinet candidates, a strategic consulting firm called WestExec quickly became the subject of investigative reports by many American media. The reason is that many of the cabinet personnel Biden has appointed or is said to be appointing are From WestExec, especially Blinken, who was nominated as Secretary of State, and Michelle Flournoy, the popular candidate for Defense Secretary, some media called it \”a company waiting to join the cabinet.\”

According to the US Defense News Network, Flournoy\’s role has changed several times between the government and think tanks. After Obama became president in 2009, Flournoy returned to politics and was appointed deputy secretary for defense policy. In 2012, he left politics and once again served as CEO of the think tank Center for a New American Security. At the same time, he founded WestExec with Blinken. The US \”Politics\” magazine stated that the Center for a New American Security relies heavily on funding from the US military industry. From 2014 to 2019, it received US$8.946 million in funding from the US government and military industry, second only to the RAND Corporation. \”Foreign Affairs\”Policy\” stated that WestExec has reportedly provided consulting services to military industrial companies, so some diplomats are worried that Flournoy\’s leadership of the Pentagon will be influenced by relevant interest groups.

There are reports that Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, is also a strong competitor for the Secretary of Defense. Johnson is a member of the board of directors of the US military giant Lockheed Martin, which has caused no less controversy than Flournoy.

Biden also recently appointed Ron Klein, a senior Democratic official, as White House chief of staff. According to US Market Watch, in 2011, 59-year-old Klein resigned from his post as chief of staff to then Vice President Biden for two years to join former AOL CEO and founder Steve Kaye. Revolution Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Si. Case recently issued a statement saying: \”Klein played an important role in building Revolution Capital into a major venture capital firm. We applaud his decision to return to public service.\”

The U.S. Market Observer Network said that Klein will lead a group of celebrities in the technology industry to join the Biden team. Biden\’s transition team includes more than 20 technology company executives, many of whom are former Obama administration officials who later joined technology companies as public policy experts. Among them: Anna Huang, a former executive at Google and Twitter, is likely to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Amazon Web Services corporate strategist Mark Schwartz will serve as an adviser to the Office of Management and Budget; Nicole Ai, LinkedIn\’s North American public policy director Thacker is expected to move to the U.S. Treasury Department; Matt Olson, a trust and security officer at Uber Technologies, is advising the U.S. intelligence community; and Ann Dunkin, chief technology officer at Dell Technologies, will serve as an adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As mentioned earlier, many candidates for senior officials in the future Biden administration have caused controversy. Like Flournoy, who has been criticized by progressives and left-wing activists for his ties to defense contractors and strategic consulting firms, others like Blinken have switched identities between politics and the “strategic consulting community.” ABC said that based on an analysis of federal lobbying records, Biden\’s 500-person transition team includes at least 40 current and former registered lobbyists. Some of them are representatives of various unions, environmental groups or other non-profit organizations, while others represent corporate and business interests, such as pharmaceutical companies or energy groups. Houser, the head of the Revolving Door Project, called on Biden to avoid recruiting lobbyists and \”shadow lobbyists\” at the same time.

The “next stop” for Trump’s subordinates

The change of office is imminent, with one party entering and the other exiting. Although Trump still refuses to admit defeat, the handover has begun, and people around him have to start thinking about the \”next stop.\”

There is news that Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Kushner, who play important roles in the White House, may move to Bedminster, New Jersey.There is the National Golf Club under Trump\’s name. Kushner may enter the real estate industry, while Ivanka may restart the \”Ivanka\” fashion brand that she closed down in 2018 to avoid suspicion, or prepare for a political career in the future. The New York Times stated that although Ivanka and Kushner have always been figures in New York\’s upper class, New York does not seem to be friendly to them.

Since November 3, Trump has fired several members of his team, such as Secretary of Defense Esper and Executive Director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Cooper Berg. Among them, Esper has always been popular among US military-industrial interest groups and conservatives. There is news that he may return to the \”Heritage Foundation\” where he once worked, or he may accept an appointment from Raytheon; Kuperberg was originally appointed , will return to the faculty position still reserved for him at Mason University.

Christie, an important staff member of the Trump team and former New Jersey Governor, was still discussing countermeasures with Trump at the Trump campaign headquarters until the evening of November 3, but after the overall situation was decided, he was The first core member to advise Trump to \”accord the rules and admit defeat without losing dignity\”. After resigning as governor in 2018, he has become a self-media writer and registered as a \”lobbyist\” in June 2020. He is keen on obtaining federal financial funding for the Tennessee Drug Addiction Treatment Center and others, and he is expected to continue doing so.

Attorney General Barr is a senior legal professional and a recognized ultra-conservative and active supporter of Trump. He will not have a place in the future government, and his experience in serving outside the judicial system is unclear. It is almost a blank slate. If the Republican Party is unwilling to accept him as a legal adviser, he may have to retire at the age of 70.

White House Press Secretary McEnany was one of the most active supporters of Trump after the election. She was originally a staff member of Fox News. Even if she does not continue to follow the Trump family in the future, It is not difficult to return to the old profession.

White House Chief of Staff Meadows has always been a \”Tea Party\” cadre. After leaving office, there is a high probability that he will return to the \”Tea Party\” and seek to return to the House of Representatives. Secretary of State Pompeo, who is most in the limelight, is still traveling \”awkwardly\” after losing the election. Some people believe that he may seek to run for president of the United States in 2024, but others say that although Pompeo has been elected to the federal House of Representatives for three terms, his foundation is not solid, and his reputation as \”the most unprofessional Secretary of State in history\” Even the Republican Party is giving him a solid thumbs up.

The British \”Financial Times\” once took stock of the lives of several former officials who left the Trump administration very early. For example, Trump\’s first chief of staff Priebus returned to his own law firm; Scaramucci, the director of the White House Communications Office who was fired after only 11 days in office, returned to his own hedge fund company, starting this year Since August, he has supported Trump’s opponent Biden; former ExxonMobil CEO and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has no longer participated in ExxonMobil’s operations after leaving the State Department. It is said that he bought a valuable house in his hometown of Texas. A $6 million mansion and runs a local horse farm.

Former White House spokesman Spicer in the Trump administrationCurrently, he has his own interview program on the American conservative media Newsmax. He founded a consulting company, but there isn’t much about it online. In September this year, he launched a new book \”Leading America\” ​​to support Trump. Tina Powell, the former deputy assistant to the president for national security and considered one of the few who left the firm significantly better off, returned to Goldman Sachs as a member of its top management committee.

Some media said that many former officials of the Trump administration seem to be not as well off as before. Now, more middle- and low-level officials may be facing difficulties. \”The \’revolving door\’ in Washington may not turn for Trump\’s \’alumni\’.\” The conservative media \”Washington Observer\” stated that people who have worked in the White House can often find jobs in lobbying or other industries, but Officials in the Trump administration are worried because liberals and some conservatives who are \”incompatible with Trump\” have called on relevant companies and academic institutions not to accept them. \”Employers considering (accepting) them should know that hiring anyone who has helped Trump attack American values ​​will have (adverse) consequences,\” Harry Severgen, a former spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, announced in an announcement titled \”Trump\” Universal Accountability Project” website said.

Rating: \”Trump F, Biden C\”

\”The \’revolving door\’ feature of the Biden period will be very prominent. A large group of senior officials and experts who were marginalized or even forced to leave the system during the presidential election may return to the core of Washington,\” Taiyi Sun, an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at Christopher Newport University in the United States, told a reporter from the Global Times. Biden has been in Washington for nearly half a century and has a wide network of connections. Among these networks and circles, WestExec, founded by Blinken and others, is the most important.

As a “revolving door” of politics, business, public relations and academia, Washington’s political ecology has always been criticized. After taking office, Obama made it clear that he would ban the \”revolving door\” between lobbying groups and public offices, and promised not to appoint lobbyists into the government. In 2017, Trump signed a lobbying ban after taking office, extending the ban on former government officials from intervening in government decision-making and lobbying after leaving office from two years to five years.

Four years ago, Trump vowed to “drain the swamp in Washington.” The New York Times stated that after Trump entered the White House, he not only failed to end Washington’s insider lobbying and benefit-seeking culture, but instead created a new swamp, manifesting this culture in new forms and allowing special interest groups to take over.

Lobbying industry spending in Washington reached a record high in 2019, and lobbying totals in 2020 also increased, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit organization that records the personal fortunes and campaign finances of U.S. politicians. Likely to stay high. Jeff Hauser, founder of the Revolving Door Project, rated the Trump administration\’s performance on the revolving door an \”F\” (on a scale of A+ to F, with F being the worst), while Biden\’s current performance is \” C\” or \”C+\”. \”If Biden issues a strong \’Moral Order’, he still has room for improvement. Hauser said.

In addition to progressive groups, the right-wing Fox News Network has also paid attention to the preparations of many former media personnel to join the Biden administration. For example, Blinken served as a CNN global affairs analyst. Richard Stengel, head of the transition team of the International Media Agency, is a political analyst at MSNBC. Some scholars said that in recent years, there have been frequent personnel changes between American media and government agencies. The news media is supposed to be a supervisor of the government. This phenomenon should attract attention.

Sun Taiyi said that the two parties in American politics alternate and the \”revolving door\” phenomenon is very common and widely accepted. . Although the Biden administration’s reliance on experienced bureaucrats and experts is not particularly exciting for Americans, it gives some people hope in this special stage. Not only is he not disgusted with the \”revolving door\”, but he also misses those \”boring\” and \”conformist\” expert bureaucrats.

In the view of Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, Trump\’s 4 In 2017, there were indeed some big changes in the \”revolving door\” in the United States, mainly on the Republican side. Quite a few Republican think tanks actually abandoned Trump and his team, Li Haidong told Global Times. A reporter from the \”Revolving Door\” said that in the eyes of the public, the representative figures in the \”revolving door\” are far away from the bottom of society, and the people are dissatisfied, but there is no way that Trump\’s coming to power reflects the public\’s desire to change the \”revolving door\”. The mentality of only taking into account the shortcomings of elites and special interest groups. The large number of popular votes Trump received in this year’s election reflects that the ground for high public dissatisfaction with elite politics is still fertile.