Bipartisan Joe Biden could lead one of America’s most radical administrations

What direction will Joe Biden set as president? The image that clings to him is that of a moderate. Having first entered politics 48 years ago, he seems to be an old-school Democrat in a party rapidly moving leftwards, and a veteran of what used to be the America’s most bipartisan institution – the Senate. Indeed, throughout his primary and presidential campaigns he presented himself as a bipartisan unifier and, as a result, was often derided as a sell-out by many on the left of his own party.

Biden’s moderation seems to stem from an astute sense of which way the wind is blowing and – depending on your perspective – either an open-minded capacity to adapt his principles or, alternatively, a weathervane-like willingness to follow trends at the expense of his own convictions (whatever they might be). Indeed, Biden is so skilled a performer in the political game that a mathematical analysis of his voting patterns found that – no matter when in 47-year Senate career – he always found himself in the dead centre of the party.

In a Democratic party which is shifting to the left, he is happy to follow it – to a degree. There were already signs of his trademark flexibility when he gained the Democratic presidential nomination. In order to defuse tensions with the left of his party, he invited a number of key figures from it – including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – to help write his presidential campaign platform.

Now, after the election, this trend seems to be continuing as testified to by the release of Biden’s Agency Review Team. This is the official list of persons who will help manage his transition into the presidency in January, providing some early hints of the direction his administration might set. Some in the team are likely to find themselves in President Biden’s eventual cabinet once he enters the Oval Office.

With some five hundred names on the Agency Review Team list, it is difficult to parse them all. However, a few trends have emerged. Most notably, while these teams feature many old names from Barack Obama era there also seems to be a distinct leftwards shift on economic affairs – particularly on finance. High-powered Wall Street insiders, who usually serve as the industry’s unofficial spokespeople in US administrations, are few and far between. Instead, Obama-era staffers jostle alongside progressive academics and a few high-level union officials.

Heading the Federal Reserve, Banking and Securities Regulators is Garry Gensler. A former Goldman Sachs employee who once helped Bill Clinton deregulate finance, he emerged under Obama as one of the banking industry’s most ferocious regulators.

Serving under him and also on Treasury team is Mehrsa Baradaran, an academic who has written extensively on how US banks fail to provide services for poorer Americans.

Then there is Damon Silvers – the director of policy and special counsel for the powerful AFL-CIO union. Under Obama, Silvers helped administer the 2008 bailout of the banks.

Another notable name on the Treasury teams is Simon Johnson, who wrote 13 Bankers, a book which sharply criticised the banks at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis.

Still, the path ahead will not be smooth. Trump’s stubborn refusal to concede has been reflected in the suspension of usual transition arrangements. Most notably, the money and access to government usually provided to these agency teams has not been released by the President and his staff.

Furthermore, an expression of intentions is one thing, doing something in office is another. Notably, a large number of presidential appointments – from the cabinet down – are subject to the approval of the Senate. Control of the upper chamber currently hangs in the balance and there is a good chance that Biden’s ambition will be checked by a Republican majority, however slim. If this is the case, even appointing more left-leaning figures to his administration, let alone passing major progressive reforms, will be prove to be very difficult.

Biden has a few options that might help him to get around these obstacles. Firstly, in terms of progressive legislation, Biden does have a track record of managing to strike deals with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, despite the latter’s reputation for determined obstructionism, even if the deals were often not always popular with his fellow Democrats.

One piece of leverage that Biden will have here is the upcoming expiry of a series of tax deductions, which Republicans will be keen to protect. Extending these in return for Republicans backing big spending plans would explode the deficit, but the Republicans have gained a reputation as fair-weather deficit hawks. Low interest rates could persuade them that the extra borrowing is possible and necessary in the context of the pandemic.

Secondly, even without a legislative majority, Biden will be far from powerless; he will still hold all the vast powers of the executive branch at his fingertips. Some might think that Biden, the arch-institutionalist, might hesitate to push these powers to their limit.

Yet the last years of the Obama administration saw a huge expansion in the number and scope of Executive Orders issued by the president. When Biden, the former vice-president of that administration, returns to power with other Obama holdovers, it might not take long for this strategy to be placed back on the table.

Indeed, Trump pushed the limits of executive power even further than Obama did. In many cases, when he couldn’t get a nominee approved by the Senate, he simply left the post open long enough to be able to legally appoint his desired candidate as “Acting” head in a given role or institution. In other areas, such as the environment and immigration, he completely upended policy – see the controversial “Muslim Ban”.

There are already signs that Biden might take a similar approach to executive power. That Biden would seek to reverse almost all of Trump’s orders was a given, but ambitious exercises of power of his own are also on the cards. Notably, Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has already suggested that Biden might use an executive order to unilaterally cancel up to $50,000 of debts off the account of every federal student-loan borrower.

Although he has been billed as Mr. Moderate, Biden may yet surprise many with the radical uses of power he seems prepared to display.