No More Cupbearers

It is likely that the Democratic Party will return to a position of formal power in the federal government this coming January. With Democrats being able to set an agenda, conduct hearings, gain meaningful legislative and regulatory concessions, and launch investigations, it is vital to start setting out what they should do with this power. There is a vast range of outrages to halt and correct, Democrats have a short legislative calendar, and the party is still shut out of the Supreme Court and the Executive. Ruthless prioritization is necessary.

Among these options, Democrats can strike at a traditional bastion of public deference to Republicans: national security and defense. The Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID, its knives to the throat of multiple NATO allies, its extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the Pacific, its abandonment of Ukraine in its war of independence, and its barely-explained war in Iran open a vulnerability that a well-organized political party can exploit. National security is rarely at the top of voters’ minds in elections, but Donald Trump has given Democrats a generational opportunity.

The problem facing the DNC, Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, and Democrats with aspirations for national level office is that Democrats in defense and national security are discredited, scattered, listless, and without collective purpose.

To take advantage of a partisan opening and to restore the United States to being a bulwark of international stability and dignity—rather than a rogue actor shattering the system it helped create—Democrats must fundamentally rethink the way national security-oriented talent is recruited, assessed, selected, and trained. Distinguishing themselves from the second Trump Administration requires either pointing to a string of successes or promising a new look. Regrettably, the Obama and Biden White Houses and their records on these issues largely compel the embrace of a new look. The only way forward is to jettison most of the old system of finding and elevating national security talent and to start anew.

While the Democrats’ problem with national security credibility is truly party-wide, and there is no one author or finisher, Democrats in positions of power have allowed career cupbearers like Susan Rice, Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk, Ben Rhodes, Liz Sherwood-Randall, and Jake Sullivan (the list is obviously longer, but they are the most prominent) to shape the party’s foreign policy thinking and action, with disasters in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Ukraine, American counterintelligence, Iran, and Gaza being their direct legacy. Men and women who elected to make service to a principal their north star found themselves without the training, vision, empathy, experience, or wisdom to understand or shape an increasingly turbulent world.

While this roster of individuals is marked with outward accomplishment – the right schools, primarily (none of them ever joined the Army or anything) – their judgment in times of crisis, their vision of the country’s potential, and their presentation of options to their principals perennially came up short. Whether it was thinking of sending a brigade of paratroopers to slow a genocide, but worrying through the partisan optics, presenting a Secretary of State a misspelled prop to provide to a hostile foreign minister, insisting that the right speech solves everything, slow-rolling Ukrainian defensive measures, or agreeing to a glossy layout during an election year, these individuals have shown consistently poor, even reckless, judgement. Yes, the presidents they served are ultimately responsible, but the presidents they served had an entire culture that reassured them they were hiring the best. In truth, they were hiring solipsism, arrogance, dependency, avarice, and cowardice.

They hired people who learned to manage up early, not manage a country with global responsibility.

These aides could not successfully organize the government (the National Security Council staff’s primary mission), or if they could organize, they were reluctant to do so in a way that threatened their placement or access to the principal who originally elevated them. If they dissented, resignation was impossible. Who were they without their sponsors? They may have been dedicated to the principles they thought they served and the principals they certainly followed up the ranks, but we live in a world they shaped and a new model is needed. It’s not that Democrats have repeatedly fallen on the wrong side of major issues, it’s that Democrats cannot connect high minded principle with actual accomplishment because their foreign policy staffs are filled with unremarkable cupbearers and briefcase carriers. A fine speech at the Brandenburg Gate, Cairo University, or the Edmund Pettus bridge isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on without some steel behind it.

George Marshall didn’t win the Second World War alone, but few people apart from FDR or Churchill did more to secure victory. It’s unremarkable to note that “personnel is policy,” but it’s absolutely true. Rather than letting this principle be an empty cliché, Democrats should elevate it to a core operational responsibility. Before Democrats can address the “how” or the “what” of a superior foreign policy vision for the 21^st century, the party should embrace a series of processes that guarantees a better set of “who” will be responsible for the bureaucratic staff work necessary to eventually advance that set of ideas.

To begin, Democrats (collectively, the Democratic National Committee, leaders on Capitol Hill, aspirants for higher offices, donors, and other opinion-shapers,) need to fundamentally re-think four steps of successful team building (Recruiting, Assessment, Selection, and Training). Democrats who care deeply about foreign policy must move fast because the gardeners of the crisis in Democratic foreign policy have stolen a march and are already trying to capture the party’s future. Therefore, this new look must begin in Recruiting, or the act of advertising the opportunity to a wide audience rather than attempting to draw water from a dusted well. Democrats should speak plainly about what is expected of foreign policy professionals. The pay is meager, the trips are uncomfortable, defeat is constant, holding a security clearance carries enduring obligations (no illegal drugs, no reckless driving, delete Facebook and X, and mind the credit card debt). Every victory is tenuous. It’s not an 18 month stint with Teach for America, it’s not a fake job called “Senior Advisor,” it’s not a gap year, it’s certainly not being jumped to Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. It’s a profession, not a knighthood. Advertise widely, tell people it’s going to be hard, and then see who remains. Through Recruiting, the Democrats can build a list of thousands of interested participants now and begin vetting them, rather than assembling an administration in the 100 days before the general election of 2028.

Second, in Assessment, or determining who can actually discharge the responsibilities of a foreign policy professional, Democrats need to adjust how they evaluate potential talent. The era of the listless Ivy Leaguer, the law journal luminary, and the speechwriter must sunset. An era of durability must open. Rumors abounded at the start of the Biden-Harris administration of the Presidential Personnel Office (the team formally responsible for hiring political appointees) effectively spiking applications that reflected too much private sector experience. While that was likely an exaggeration, partisan critiques found an extraordinarily limited range of private sector experience in the administration. Given the vast array of authority possessed in the Executive Branch, this state of affairs created a cognitive vulnerability for the Biden-Harris administration that cannot be repeated. While excellent public servants like Gina Raimondo brought both executive and private sector expertise to the Cabinet, she was an exception. For an additional model of who should be sought in the Democratic Party’s future, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offers a valuable model of someone who has worked in the private sector and lets those experiences meaningfully shape her advocacy. The party needs more servers and fewer scions. Fellow New Yorker Pat Ryan, too, didn’t just jump from the Army to Congress. He worked in the private sector and at the local government level before joining Congress. 

Accordingly, Democrats need to substantially expand their talent pipeline and seek far more experiential diversity. “Non-Profit” is a tax consideration, not a career goal. Democrats must consider candidates with experience in federal, state, and local government, unions, small businesses, growth-stage companies, large multinationals, the financial services industry, medicine, the military, the defense industrial sector, hospitality, agriculture, education, law enforcement –everywhere. The party needs a wide range of technical expertise and practical experience to guide the ship of state, not just people who made one supervisor happy one time and decided to make a career out of it. Carrying a principal’s briefcase (physically or rhetorically) in perpetuity is uninteresting and safe. It’s also a vulnerability when the briefcase carrier is vaulted into a position of authority. 

Democrats cannot hire “Clerk to Supreme Court Justice” or “Rhodes Scholar” and expect managerial or technical excellence. The party should look for nimble candidates to fill its ranks: mid-career changes, time off as caregivers or parents, enlisted troops and non-commissioned officers, college attendance late in life, and night school graduates. It’s extremely easy to go to law school when you’re 23 years old and have no responsibilities to anyone but yourself. Hire for durability, not mere branding.

Now, with a fair minded pitch to the population having been made, and a far more diverse concept of the “right” candidate in hand, Democrats need to maintain an exacting standard in the Selection process of team building and then be prepared to uphold that standard. Joe Biden both announced a no jerks policy and then hired Susan Rice and TJ Ducklo. People who scream at aides or reporters aren’t going to make it in the future Democratic Party. There are thousands of positions to fill in the Executive Branch, Congress, and in supporting infrastructure. It would be unwieldy to itemize a universal roster of mandatory skills to possess. A specific party line on every single issue is also unnecessary. Rather, a set of collective themes should be employed during Selection to determine who should be advanced for the top positions. 

First, candidates should demonstrate career independence: they cannot have spent multiple years working for the same supervisor in the same office. Capitol Hill veterans will be at a disadvantage, but candidates will need to prove that they have not simply chosen their own supervisor again and again. Candidates should point out roles where they were effectively anonymous and still succeeded. Candidates should be able to talk about times where they walked away from a supervisor rather than compromise their values. 

Second, hard skills matter. Language, medical expertise, piloting, firefighting, plumbing, financial modeling, – take your pick. Candidates must indicate that they have legitimate experience discharging complicated responsibilities. No self-described “Strategists” should apply, only people who know how to actually deliver a solution and manage a budget. Simply having written for a law journal or worked in donor management for a summer does not meet the threshold.

Third, candidates will need to be superb communicators. They will need to be able to write with skill without the aid of AI tools and speak extemporaneously on topics that matter to them. The media is not a reflexive ally of the Democratic Party and Democrats cannot hide from modern communications platforms like TikTok or podcasting, not even in the relatively reserved world of national security. 

Fourth, candidates will have to demonstrate continued intellectual and personal improvement through training and education. Simply having a B.A. is not the point. Illustrating a pattern of accepting new challenges through formal training and education is necessary. You have a PhD in American History? That’s great, now learn how to tie a tourniquet and perform advanced CPR. You were in the 75^th Ranger Regiment? Great, now tell us how you can cook for 20 guests. You didn’t go to college? Fine, you’re making a reading list for the candidate about how the job market felt for you and your family. You served in DOGE, you were a White House Fellow, or you’re with the Council on Foreign Relations? Call us skeptical at best. 

Last, candidates must be ready to play by the rules—even if arbitrary—set out for government service. You need to uphold Constitutional and legal obligations and take cybersecurity and counterintelligence seriously. You’re also not trading a single stock any longer—you have no time to do it anyway, and it stinks of fraud even if you do. There are other places to contribute as a citizen if you don’t want to limit your personal freedom in service (there are also other political parties to back if you don’t want to uphold obligations to anyone else). Finally, the Democratic Party needs courageous partisans who are willing to lose friendships, enter into arguments, push their allies, and reward their coalition. Politics never stopped at the water’s edge and neither can the party. 

In sum, Selection is a value judgement, but it needs to be multi-point, tailored to an individual’s circumstances, and measured to ensure that a candidate actually wants the job and will do their best to secure the party’s objectives. Teamwork, a good attitude, knowing how to operate Outlook, answering your voicemails, speaking in complete sentences on multiple topics without advance preparation, and showing up on time are all assumed. The Democrats need to start asking the harder questions.

Finally, Democrats should have a form of continuing education and Training that keeps their talent tied to the cold realities of modern war and conflict. This is not simply attending panel discussions at a think tank. It’s cold nights in Kyiv or points east. It’s witnessing exhausted paratroopers react to simulated air strikes at the Joint Readiness Training Center. It’s language classes on the weekend. It’s helping with disaster relief after a tornado. It’s an associate degree at a community college. Training helps fuse individuals into cohesive teams. It will require group writing projects, multimedia presentations, research efforts, wargaming, volunteering and campaign work, and other challenges to ensure that durable individuals make up structured and meaningful teams. 

Beyond the four core principles of how a pipeline should work, the party should make its fundamental values clear. The array of geopolitical challenges facing the United States is too vast to test on a case-by-case basis, so a set of values must serve as the final filter. It’s simple: respect for rule of law at home and abroad, full citizenship for all Americans, and the potential of the United States to serve as a force for liberation. Nearly all domestic or international disputes can be bifurcated along these lines and the Democratic Party easily fits on the correct side of these splits. Call it old fashioned, but you need common fundamentals to anchor Recruiting, Assessment, Training, and Selection or you’ll end up with a muddled, dysfunctional finished product.

This new process all adds up to a new level of formality in Democratic foreign policy recruitment. The objective is to push away from the string of cupbearers and briefcase carriers who populated the senior ranks of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden Administrations. Political parties will always hire from the inside, people like keeping their friends around, and there’s always a favor to do for a donor, but with public confidence in Democrats being at all time lows, a clear roster indicating what separates the party from its domestic opposition could be decisive. Democrats merely need to start asking the right questions, setting out high standards, and asking for Americans of all ages, educations, experiences, and professions to take up an essential challenge facing the party, the country, and the world. There’s no future in the party’s intellectual stasis, and if new ideas do not replace the old, the party stands at risk of replaying the Biden Administration’s original sin: forgiving far too many trespasses and selecting a team comfortable with the present rather than hiring challengers who wanted to break from the past and build a better future from day one.

Featured image is Jake Sullivan, by Ralph Alswang