The Biden Loyalty Machine Administration insiders play by one rule: Never criticize other insiders. By Andy Kessler
In her 2014 book, “A Fighting Chance,” Elizabeth Warren describes advice she received from Lawrence Summers when he was Harvard’s president: “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People—powerful people—listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”
Want to see this in action? In his 2021 book, “A Plague Upon Our House,” about his time as an adviser to the Trump administration on Covid-19, the Hoover Institution’s Scott Atlas describes “a functioning troika of ‘medical experts’ composed of Drs. Birx, Fauci, and Redfield.” He “noticed that there was virtually no disagreement among them. It was an amazing consistency, as though there were an agreed-upon complicity—even though some of their statements were so patently simplistic or erroneous.” Loyalty! But was that for the best? After two years of Covid restrictions, obviously not.
Loyalty is overrated. Harry S. Truman, worried about communist infiltration, instituted a Loyalty Program in 1947 via executive order, expecting “complete and unswerving loyalty” from federal employees. Seventy years later, FBI Director James Comey insisted that President Trump, at a private dinner, asked him for his loyalty. Mr. Comey declined. Mr. Trump then asked for “honest loyalty,” which Mr. Comey agreed to, knowing it didn’t mean anything.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a 2019 ruling: “Presidents are not kings. . . . This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” Amen.
But the Biden administration doesn’t want to hear this. Today’s insiders all seem to be singing from the same hymn book, imposing a strict ideology on us, their subjects. As an outsider I can insist: This isn’t healthy.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a monetary dove who helped get us into today’s runaway inflation mess, launched “a Treasury-wide equity review” with dreams “of building a more equitable—especially a more racially equitable—economy.” That’s not equality she’s talking about; it sounds a lot like redirecting capital to favorites. She’s singing sonore.
Then there’s small-town mayor turned Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. You would think he’d notice today’s broken supply chains. Ports are backed up. There aren’t enough truck drivers. Interest rates are doubling and tripling. You’re probably waiting six months for a new refrigerator. Instead, Mr. Buttigieg notes that highways are “racist,” but he’ll fix that via the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law signed in November.
Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has similar loyalties. Instead of identifying today’s excessive debt loads or going after the frauds and hacks in the Wild West of cryptocurrency, Mr. Gensler is demanding that companies make “climate-related disclosures,” including direct greenhouse-gas emissions as well as emissions in “upstream and downstream activities” in the “value chain.” Any number a company produces would be only a guess. And this is likely in violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Matrixx Initiatives v. Siracusano that disclosure and materiality be set by the view of a “reasonable investor.” I’m pretty reasonable, and like most investors, at least those who don’t like to lose money, I look at business models and potential earnings, not emissions estimates.
The Federal Reserve, a supposedly independent entity, has also added equity to its list of responsibilities. Perhaps because on the campaign trail Joe Biden declared, “We’re going to strengthen the Federal Reserve’s focus on racial economic equity.” Now the Fed governors expect banks, which already identify and monitor material risks, “to extend to climate risks.” Meanwhile they’re playing catch-up on price stability.
And how about the military? In June 2021, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told Congress, “I want to understand white rage.” Then in a January letter to Sen. James Inhofe, Gen. Milley said U.S. service members had spent almost six million man-hours since Mr. Biden took office on “extremism stand-down” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” training, including critical race theory. Two words: Afghanistan exit. And please focus more on future Russian and Chinese rage.
This loyalty stuff has gone too far. A new Disinformation Governance Board is being created to monitor speech, which could stifle criticism. Where is the Lincolnesque “team of rivals” cabinet? Insiders should be vigorously debating what’s best for the country, not joining the chorus.
By the way, Mr. Summers, now an outsider, has been more right on inflation than the administration’s “team transitory” insiders. Being an outsider must free one’s intellectual juices to be right rather than loyal.
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