Borders were secure in the Rose Garden on Friday as President Obama announced his choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
Forming a gender divide in the front row were VIP administration enforcers -- all male -- sitting to the president’s left. To his right, a row of top White House advisers, all women. In between, an expanse of green lawn.
The placement of power was an accident of title-clusters, but the visual arrangement made White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Tina Tchen, chief of staff to Michelle Obama, laugh out loud when they realized what was up.
The two women, both energetic advocates for diversity in Obama’s world, sat in folding chairs next to the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser (Lisa Monaco); national security adviser (Susan Rice); domestic policy adviser (Cecilia Munoz); and environmental adviser (Nancy Sutley). In Washington’s pecking order, the women are powerful players, but staff.
Across the grass, some of Obama’s Cabinet members, instructed to sit in seats marked with cards that said “Cabinet Affairs,” appeared oblivious that they had formed a lineup of graying men, all of whom had been approved by the Senate to manage governance.
Seated were Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director James Comey, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Under Secretary of Homeland Security Rand Beers, plus Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Obama mentioned that the nominee they came to see, former Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson, would succeed a woman, former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, if confirmed to lead DHS. (Napolitano -- a Democrat from a conservative border state with a record of being tough on undocumented immigrants -- became president of the University of California's 10 campus system in September.)
To clear any successor through the Senate in a second term is an important goal for the president. After filling the top job, an estimated 40 percent of DHS leadership positions will still need permanent appointees.
Johnson’s thin record on border enforcement, disaster response, and immigration issues -- while seen as gaps by some senators -- may prove helpful during his Senate hearing, especially as Obama makes a final push this year to enact an immigration reform measure. Lacking that expertise, Johnson can be something of a blank slate, leading GOP senators to focus on his role in the administration’s counterterrorism policies. Democrats, unhappy that the Obama administration’s annual deportations of undocumented immigrants have outstripped the record of the George W. Bush administration, would face in Johnson, as they did with Napolitano, someone whose explanations hinge on existing law.
The Senate confirmed Johnson in 2009 to be the Defense Department’s top lawyer. Having cleared that bar before, administration officials expect he can win support again, especially from key Republican senators who believe tough border enforcement must be part of any immigration overhaul.
“When I directed my national security team to be more open and transparent about how our policies work and how we make decisions, especially when it comes to preventing terrorist attacks, Jeh was one of the leaders who spoke eloquently about how we meet today's threats in a way that [is] consistent with our values, including the rule of law,” said Obama, flanked by Johnson and Vice President Joe Biden.
“Jeh also knows that meeting these threats demands cooperation and coordination across our government. He's been there in the Situation Room, at the table, in moments of decision, working with leaders from a host of agencies to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction,” the president added.
The White House appeared sensitive Friday to suggestions that Johnson lacked experience managing anything as large as DHS, an entity created by Congress after 9/11 by merging a tangle of missions carried out by more than 240,000 federal employees. The president’s aides predicted that once the administration explained Johnson’s record, any lingering concerns in the Senate would fade.
Obama took the first crack at the salesmanship, implicitly suggesting through his choice of an audience that Johnson would soon be seated in the row of Cabinet guardians who can operate across ideological borders and keep the country safe.
“Jeh has experienced leading large, complex organizations,” the president said. “As a member of the Pentagon's senior management team, first under Bob Gates and then under Leon Panetta, he helped oversee the work of more than 3 million military and civilian personnel across the country and around the world. And I think it's fair to say that both former Secretaries Gates and Panetta will attest to the incredible professionalism that Jeh brings to the job and the bipartisan approach that appropriately he takes when it comes to national security.”
That the president’s announcement took place a day after the government reopened suggested a hastily scheduled event. That was underscored when Johnson mentioned that his wife and children were absent from the Rose Garden milestone because they had all planned to visit a son at Los Angeles’s Occidental College, for parents’ weekend.
“Thanks to the costs of a nonrefundable airline ticket,” the nominee joked, “they could not be in two places at once.”
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