Leon Panetta On Biden's Cabinet

An interview with Leon Panetta, who had been Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and Barack Obama's Defense Secretary, in yesterday's Politico confirms my surmise about the state of Joe Biden's cabinet:

There’s been a gradual deterioration here with regards to the role of the Cabinet. Because so much authority is centralized in the White House these days, the Cabinet really only comes together usually for a press briefing by the president.

Normally, what should be the case is there’s a secretary to the Cabinet, and there should be regular meetings with the Cabinet to not only inform them about issues going on but also to stay in touch with them, so that they feel like they’re part of the team. As that relationship generally has been strained in the last number of years, I think everybody kind of operates on their own. You saw a little bit of that happen here.

To reword this slightly, it seems like what Panetta, who's had plenty of high-level experience in government, is saying is that Biden has centralized authority in the White House at the expense of the cabinet, except that Biden basically isn't doing anything. Thus the cabinet gets no guidance, although they can bungle issues like Ukraine or border security on their own authority. But they were appointed primarily to satisgfy particular constituencies that would get Joe elected, and beyond that, Joe has no particular expectations for them.

This is consistent with reported concerns that Barack Obama transmitted to Joe in a recent White House lunch:

Barack Obama recently had an off-the-books White House lunch with President Joe Biden to share his concerns and advice about his former running mate's campaign, according to a new report.

Obama grew 'animated' as he discussed the 2024 election and Donald Trump's bid to return to the presidency, and suggested Biden should restructure his campaign to be more agile, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.

. . . According to the Post, Obama suggested that Biden's campaign, which is headquartered in Delaware, needed to grow more nimble and be empowered to act without sign-off from the White House, where many of Biden's top advisors remain.

This was pretty clearly leaked from sources close to Obama, and the impression was reinforced when the Biden campaign responded a day later:

Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for President Biden’s reelection bid, on Sunday defended the campaign’s approach and stressed that Obama and Biden are aligned in their position that Trump needs to be defeated.

. . . Fulks’s defense of the president and his reelection bid comes after The Washington Post reported a story about concerns Obama expressed to Biden at a lunch at the White House in December. Obama reportedly told Biden that it’s important to have more top-level decisionmakers in the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., or that he needs to empower those already there.

Fulks did not respond to a specific follow-up question on whether the campaign plans to make any structural changes to the campaign.

The implicit complaint from both Panetta and Obama is that Joe wants to reserve decisions to himself, but he doesn't want to be bothered to make decisions, so nobody knows what to do. Thus the whole organization is pretty much out to lunch.

There's more to say about how this is reflected in Joe's campaign.