Biden, like most Democratic presidents, is determined to make his cabinet “look like America.” How important is that? Let’s consider three propositions:
- HAVING A DIVERSE CABINET GUARANTEES THAT THE PRESIDENT WILL HEAR A WIDE RANGE OF PERSPECTIVES: Not really. Most cabinet members don’t have significant influence on the president’s decisionmaking process on a day-to-day basis, and just providing ethnic and sexual diversity doesn’t in any way provide assurance of a range of opinions, particularly in a party with a fairly well-defined agenda.
- HAVING A DIVERSE CABINET SENDS AN INSPIRING MESSAGE TO AMERICANS THAT MEMBERS OF HISTORICALLY POWERLESS GROUPS CAN MAKE IT, TOO: That only applies to very visible positions. Providing diversity among Supreme Court justices, for example, might matter. But do you think that anyone is inspired by Elaine Chao? How many people even know what she does?
- MAKING A SPECIAL EFFORT TO DIVERSIFY THE CABINET ELIMINATES WELL-QUALIFIED APPLICANTS AND THUS REDUCES COMPETENCE: This isn’t like filling a local government post, with a small number of potential applicants. There are over 300 million people in America. Even if you limit yourself to, say, black women, the pool of qualified applicants will be large enough that competence won’t be a problem.
My conclusion? Diversity is meaningful to some activists, but not really to the country as a whole, either pro or con.