WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. named two senior officers from the Obama White Home to key jobs on Thursday, placing Susan Rice, a
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. named two senior officers from the Obama White Home to key jobs on Thursday, placing Susan Rice, a former nationwide safety adviser, answerable for his Home Coverage Council and nominating President Barack Obama’s chief of workers, Denis McDonough, to be secretary of veterans affairs.
Each selections got here as surprises, notably the choice to position a lifelong nationwide safety skilled like Ms. Rice right into a prime home coverage job. On the identical time, they replicate Mr. Biden’s want to populate the higher ranges of his incoming administration with individuals he is aware of nicely, and with whom he has labored intently prior to now.
The appointment of Ms. Rice additionally helps Mr. Biden meet his dedication to variety by putting in a Black lady in a White Home submit with main affect over a variety of federal insurance policies, from training to well being care to racial fairness.
Like Ms. Rice, Mr. McDonough, who if confirmed will take over the Division of Veterans Affairs, a politically vital company lengthy recognized for dysfunction and scandal, has a nationwide safety background. He served as a international coverage aide on Capitol Hill after which as President Barack Obama’s deputy nationwide safety adviser earlier than changing into his chief of workers.
Through the Obama administration, each Mr. McDonough and Ms. Rice spent numerous hours with Mr. Biden, then the vice chairman, within the Oval Workplace and the State of affairs Room. Individuals aware of their choice mentioned the president-elect sees them each as tenacious managers with a deep understanding of the federal paperwork.
Ms. Rice’s friendship with Mr. Biden led to hypothesis that he would select her as his working mate, however he picked Senator Kamala Harris of California as an alternative.
Although Mr. McDonough’s choice was surprising, former colleagues mentioned he took an intense curiosity in army households in the course of the Obama administration, in addition to the infamous case backlog on the sprawling division that manages well being care and different advantages for veterans. He additionally traveled usually to fight zones, and sometimes visited with wounded troopers at Walter Reed Nationwide Army Medical Middle. Mr. McDonough’s spouse, Kari, is the co-founder and president of a company that assists veterans reintegrating into their communities.
“If you recognize Denis McDonough, there may be nothing in any respect shocking about the concept the V.A. would actually be the man’s dream authorities place,” mentioned Ben Rhodes, a deputy nationwide safety adviser within the Obama White Home. “He’s animated by veterans’ points in a means that he’s not animated by the rest, together with nationwide safety points.”
Mr. Rhodes recalled many cases when he would “spherical a flip within the West Wing at like 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and the man was giving a tour to 10 wounded warriors.”
If confirmed, Mr. McDonough, 51, can be simply the second chief of the Division of Veterans Affairs because it supplanted the Veterans Administration in 1989 to not have served within the army. The opposite was President Trump’s first secretary, David Shulkin, whom the Senate confirmed by unanimous consent.
The appointment of Ms. Rice, 56, was an excellent larger shock. Many longtime home coverage consultants throughout the Democratic Occasion complained privately on Thursday that Mr. Biden had handed over candidates with direct expertise on points like training and the economic system.
A graduate of Stanford and a Rhodes scholar, Ms. Rice joined President Invoice Clinton’s Nationwide Safety Council workers in 1993 and went on to change into an assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She returned to authorities underneath Mr. Obama, first as his ambassador to the United Nations after which as nationwide safety adviser, a job she held for 4 years.
After leaving authorities with the election of Mr. Trump, Ms. Rice grew to become a contributing opinion author for The New York Occasions for 3 years. Her final column for The Occasions was printed on Dec. 1.
She has twice been a finalist for secretary of state, first underneath Mr. Obama and extra lately as Mr. Biden assembled his nationwide safety staff. However she was twice handed over, partially due to concern over a probably bloody affirmation struggle.
Republicans focused Ms. Rice for feedback she made shortly after the Sept. 11, 2012, assault on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, downplaying terrorism as a motive. In an election yr, they turned the assault into a serious political challenge, singling out her and Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state. Allies of Ms. Rice mentioned she was the sufferer of smears and discrimination and famous that congressional inquiries discovered no wrongdoing on her half.
Ms. Rice’s new place doesn’t require Senate affirmation. In a press release saying her appointment, Mr. Biden’s transition staff mentioned that she “is aware of authorities inside and outside and can carry via the president-elect’s imaginative and prescient of a newly empowered Home Coverage Council and turbocharge the hassle to construct again higher.”
Established in 1993, the Home Coverage Council — very like its nationwide safety counterpart that Ms. Rice managed — coordinates home policymaking throughout the federal authorities, aside from the various financial issues overseen by the Nationwide Financial Council.
The Presidential Transition
Mr. Rhodes mentioned that Ms. Rice had labored extensively as nationwide safety adviser on points that straddled the international and home realms in the course of the Obama administration, together with a flood of migrant households on the southern American border and an Ebola outbreak in Africa. “Nationwide safety and home strains have been blurred,” notably for the reason that introduction of the coronavirus, certain to be one among her prime priorities, he mentioned.
Melody Barnes, who led the Home Coverage Council underneath Mr. Obama, mentioned Ms. Rice had the important bureaucratic know-how required to run the physique successfully and famous that she can be supported by a formidable workers of consultants.
“She’s an mental powerhouse,” Ms. Barnes mentioned. “She has in depth authorities expertise and is aware of learn how to handle a course of, and work with departments and companies, which is a vital a part of the director’s job.”
Ms. Rice comes from a household of home coverage fans. Her mom, Lois Rice, was an training coverage knowledgeable usually referred to as “the mom of the Pell grant” due to her key lobbying position behind the federal faculty subsidy created in 1965.
A pioneering Black lady in authorities, Ms. Rice additionally has a eager challenge in racial justice. Ms. Barnes famous that the Home Coverage Council would play a central position in Mr. Biden’s efforts to advance racial fairness.
A tour of obligation in home affairs may additionally assist place Ms. Rice for a future run for workplace. She lately contemplated a run for Senate in Maine, a state the place she has household roots, and was a finalist to change into Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential working mate.
Like Ms. Rice, Mr. McDonough, a graduate of St. John’s College in Minnesota and the Georgetown Faculty of International Service, is named a demanding, hard-nosed supervisor impatient with confusion and delay. If confirmed, he’ll oversee a division whose huge measurement is matched solely by its seemingly intractable issues.
It’s the authorities’s second-largest division, with round 375,000 staff and a finances of greater than $200 billion that funds a troubled well being care system that underwent immense pressure after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Biden’s hope is that Mr. McDonough can apply the administration acumen he developed as chief of workers to creating the troubled division extra environment friendly and efficient.
Through the Obama administration, officers at a Phoenix medical heart had been discovered to have manipulated knowledge regarding lengthy wait instances for veterans that will have led to affected person deaths. That led to the departure of Eric Shinseki, the secretary on the time, and Mr. McDonough helped shepherd laws to offer veterans entry to care exterior the division’s system.
Mr. Rhodes mentioned Mr. McDonough grew to become “obsessed” with cruelly lengthy wait instances for well being care and made it a prime precedence when he served as chief of workers.
Mr. Trump put the troubled division on the heart of his personal political agenda, and pushed arduous to broaden veterans’ entry to personal care. His most up-to-date secretary, Robert L. Wilkie, shunned conventional veterans organizations and plenty of lawmakers in favor of conservative teams that championed personal care, notably Involved Veterans for America, an advocacy group with ties to the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.
The division grew to become deeply politicized and confronted further issues brought on by an costly digital medical report retaining system, the rollout of its expanded neighborhood care program and an inspector normal’s report extremely essential of Mr. Wilkie’s dealing with of a reported sexual assault case at a division hospital.
In a press release, Will Fischer, a senior adviser to the liberal veterans’ group VoteVets, acknowledged that few had seen Mr. McDonough’s choice coming. “Some could say this choose is surprising and out of left discipline,” he mentioned, however referred to as the selection “a grand slam.”
“What the V.A. wants, greater than something, is an skilled supervisor, with deep depth of information about how the company works, the way it interacts with different companies and learn how to rapidly construct the company again, even higher,” he mentioned.
Mr. Biden plans to introduce Mr. McDonough and Ms. Rice at a public occasion in Wilmington, Del., on Friday afternoon.
Michael D. Shear, Jennifer Steinhauer and Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.