Author Matt Yglesias said Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks give an “extraordinary level of look back” to the Obama administration.
Speaking on Hill TV’s “Rising,” Yglesias said that Biden’s Cabinet selections have not been surprising given that he was vice president under former President Obama and campaigned on bringing “the good old days back.”
“You can’t really look at these picks and say ‘oh, he’s betrayed his promises to America,’” he said. “I do think that even within that context, there is a kind of extraordinary level of look back to the Obama second term in the picks we’ve had.”
Yglesias pointed to Tom Vislack, Biden’s pick to serve as Agriculture secretary, who held the same role for the duration of the Obama administration.
He said that Janet Yellen, Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary, was the “closest thing to a real outsider” among Biden’s choices so far.
“She wasn’t like part of the team,” he said of Yellen, who served as the Federal Reserve chairwoman during Obama’s second term.
“Biden knows a lot of people,” Yglesias said. “He seem’s much more interested in assembling a team of people that he knows and has worked with personally rather than expanding the circle or putting new faces forward.”
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