BORING PLACEHOLDER ALONE WAS WORTH THE VOTE:

Biden's organizing principle seems to be a Barack Obama-inspired "no drama" insistence on minimizing the potential for conflict in his administration. He set out to make his picks by identifying a diverse group of inoffensive, proven bureaucrats and people who are familiar to him, rather than sifting through a ton of policy experts he didn't know quite as well. Whereas his immediate predecessor obliterated the expectation of expertise in any form, Biden has put a premium on trust, general government experience, and a semblance of ideological balance over subject-matter virtuosity largely because he sees the country as facing a sprawling, interconnected crisis rather than a set of parallel disasters to be dealt with agency by agency.

With some exceptions, if there was any reason to believe a potential pick might cause heartburn -- leaks? Scandals? -- they were out. At times, that has meant dumping political allies: Buttigieg made sense for Transportation because the early front-runner, L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti, a Biden campaign co-chair, became a political liability following reports that he knew about one of his top aides' sexual misconduct. After New Mexico governor and transition co-chair Michelle Lujan Grisham turned down Interior secretary because she wanted the HHS job, only for that snub to leak to the press, she was iced out. By that point, Becerra, who was first considered for attorney general, was looked upon favorably for his work as California's top lawyer defending Obamacare from Trump's assaults.

Even some within Biden's camp aren't completely sure how this kind of Cabinet is supposed to work: Where are the lines of command in an ecosystem with so many picks who are known to have backslapping, personal access to him or are considered among nearly half a century's worth of Biden's D.C. friends? Already, some Democratic senators are griping about not being kept more directly in the loop -- and are annoyed they didn't get a formal heads-up about Biden's ex-military Defense-secretary nominee, for whom they'll have to pass an exemption, despite the fact that that pick was publicly floated for a week.

Tweet   @brothersjudd