THE POLITICAL SON OF GHWB:

The "comfort-level" Cabinet that President-elect Joe Biden is assembling has some obvious benefits, especially after four years of the petulance and backbiting that turned the White House into what one Trump chief of staff reportedly called "Crazytown."

Yes, Biden needs to help the United States take a deep breath, without presidential appointees sniping at each other and jostling for position. He's gathering a Cabinet that mirrors his own strengths -- sane men and women, each one likable and competent. Like Biden, they can play the old tunes so well that maybe Americans will begin to forget what they're so angry about.

But the virtues of calm and collegiality can be overstated. A team of elbows-in former colleagues and aides may end up looking more like a Senate staff than a dynamic Cabinet. Biden understandably doesn't want a fractious "team of rivals," as Doris Kearns Goodwin dubbed President Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet. But he shouldn't have a team of retreads, either. [...]

Biden has appeared conflict-averse in his initial Cabinet picks. His primary metric, in addition to competence, seems to be his familiarity and personal ease with his appointees. That's obviously true with his picks for secretary of state, defense and national security adviser -- Antony Blinken, retired Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III and Jake Sullivan, respectively. They've all worked smoothly with Biden in the past.

The comfort factor extends to keeping powerful interest groups happy, too. Biden's commitment to assembling the most diverse Cabinet in U.S. history is unambiguously positive. But in terms of ideological diversity, it's worrying that potential nominees who drew fire from the left, such as Michèle Flournoy for defense or Michael Morell at the CIA, seem to get bypassed in favor of blander, safer choices.

Tweet   @brothersjudd