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Hold on to your hats, it's another Obama-Biden transition announcement. Yes, Agency Review team leaders have been identified. These folks will be going through every aspect of each agency's responsibilities in order to determine how to approach policy making, budgetary decisions and appointments -- essentially, they are the first briefers for the Cabinet appointees to help them through confirmation hearings and the early running of the agencies. I'll put the names and bios after the jump, but here are a few observations that came to my mind.
- Bureaucrats: Most of these folks are experienced career staffers in their fields, who have held mid- to high-level positions in prior administrations. It says ... serious!
- I-Bankers: Not all too surprising, but both Treasury Team Leaders are investment bankers, which is a little dissapointing. This review project is obviously a job for practicioners, not theorists, but including a someone from outside the finance industry might have been a nice gesture from the transition team.
- Hints: Michele Flournoy, one of the DoD team leaders, is an outside candidate for Secretary of Defense. Similarly, Sarah Sewall, a leading counterinsurgency theorist and national security expert working on the Agency Review advisory board, is occasionally mentioned as a possible National Security Adviser. Mike Crowley notes that Tom Donilon is a protege of former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, whose tenure is not looked upon too favorably by, uh, anyone.
- A Touch of CAP: One of the three Agency Review co-chairs is Melody Barnes, who was an Obama campaign adviser but prior to that was a top official at the Center for American Progress, the locus of all kinds of transition efforts.
Anyone else see anything interesting among these names?
-- Tim Fernholz
