By MARSHA MERCER
On his first day in
office, President Joe Biden told White House staff to treat others with respect
-- or else.
“I’m not joking when
I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another with
disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On
the spot,” the president said. “No if, ands or buts.”
A few weeks later, a
deputy White House press secretary was forced to resign after reports he spoke
abusively to a reporter who was writing a story about his romantic relationship
with a reporter for another news organization.
“We are committed to
striving every day to meet the standard set by the President in treating others
with dignity and respect, with civility and with a value for others through our
words and our actions,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
But where to draw the
line? What about mean tweets?
Biden’s choice of Neera
Tanden as director of the Office of Management and
Budget shows how challenging it will be to change the culture and tone of Washington
in the age of political warfare on social media.
A former top aide to
Hillary Clinton, Tanden is
president of the liberal Center for American Progress. She stood to become the first woman of color and
Indian American to lead OMB, the office that develops the president’s budget
and sets out his legislative agenda.
She brings a compelling personal story and perspective.
After her parents divorced when she was a child, her mother relied on food
stamps and public housing.
"Now, I'm being
nominated to help ensure those programs are secure, and ensure families like
mine can live with dignity. I am beyond honored," Tanden tweeted.
But her history of
aggressive, political tweets apparently doomed her chances for the OMB job. The
White House is considering her for other positions that do not require Senate
confirmation.
Which job Tanden lands,
if any, will test Biden’s commitment to turning the page and setting a new tone
of calm and civility.
Tanden has tweeted more than 87,000 times since 2010 -- more
than Biden’s predecessor. And like the former president’s, Tanden’s tweets
often have been personal and scathing.
Social media encourages
quick and nasty hits. Returning fire with fire seemed appropriate when the
president was continually on Twitter to bash his opponents. Tanden, though, managed to antagonize those on the left as
well as the right. Progressives and conservatives were her targets.
“Your attacks were not
just made against Republicans. There were vicious attacks made against
progressives. People who I have worked with – me, personally,” Sen. Bernie
Sanders, now the Budget Committee chairman, told her at a committee hearing
Feb. 10.
Sen. John Kennedy,
Republican of Louisiana, told Tanden at a budget hearing Wednesday he was “very
disturbed” by the personal nature of her tweets. “I mean you called Senator
Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” he said.
“That’s not true,
senator,” Tanden shot back.
Some Democrats
rightly argue it’s hypocritical for tweets to disqualify someone for a job after
Republicans ignored the White House tweet storm of the last four years. In
addition, several OMB directors have come from the political world.
Tanden said she
regrets her tweets, deleted more than a thousand of them and promised a “radically
different” approach.
It’s too late. With Democrats and Republicans tied 50-50 in
the Senate, Biden must move forward to cultivate a new spirit of cooperation and
bipartisanship. He has less
than two years until the mid-term elections to get things done. Republicans already
are working to regain the Senate and add to their numbers in the House.
No president should
saddle himself with any appointees who have alienated half the Senate and much
of the House. Democrats hold a razor-thin majority of just 10 votes in the
House.
That said, there’s no
guarantee ditching Tanden means Republicans will show up waving olive branches in
support of Biden’s agenda.
But if the president genuinely
wants a new era, he must live up to his own high standards. Keeping Tanden will make that impossible.
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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