FGH’s Liz Allen, former advisor to President Biden and Vice President Harris, shares some observations as the Biden Administration gets up and running. 

Expect the cabinet to be more visible in this administration. 

• President Biden views agency heads as governing partners with broad opportunity to reach the American people.  The Biden cabinet is the most diverse in history.

• Biden’s cabinet reflects respect for experience combined with a desire to break institutional norms, such as appointing Janet Yellen the first female Treasury Secretary in U.S. history.  

Unity, not unanimity.

• President Biden ran on a platform of unifying the country. That message is being weaponized by the right and questioned by the media. 

• The White House says: “The president ran on unifying the country, not on creating one political party.” 

• Look for unity to be framed as a broadly-supported agenda, not necessarily bipartisan votes in Congress. 

Who Run the World? Girls.

• Dr. Jill Biden is the first First Lady to work full-time, keeping her job as a community college professor. And she has shown early interest in policy issues such as immigration, family reunification, and cancer research, besides continuing her platform on education and military families. 

• Vice President Kamala Harris is being positioned as a full governing partner to the president, without a discrete portfolio at this time. 
  
  
• Women in media: the chief network White House correspondents from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN are all women for the first time, and they’re working with an all-women senior White House communications team.