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Notes -
This really makes me wonder how much importance cabinet secretaries actually have in the United States. In contrast to Westminster governments where the cabinet itself, and cabinet-level officials, have a great deal of importance, the cabinet of the US is really just a body of advisors to the President who has unilateral authority over the executive branch. We don't have anything like a finance minister who is in charge of the budget, or a home secretary who is in charge of domestic policy. We have the President, who is the man, and then we have a bunch of technocrats with domain-specific knowledge, as well as Pete Buttigieg, who only show up in the news when something goes wrong, or in the occasional moment where technocratic information about, like, interest rates is relevant. I think of cabinet secretaries as civil servants who happen to be politically appointed.
Maybe it's not such a big deal that the defense secretary disappeared, because the President liases with the joint chiefs himself anyway. It's not like the defense secretary is the commander in chief.
Vice President might be the most insignificant office, but "Secretary of X" follows closely behind.
By the same token though, whereas a Minister of Defence will typically be a factional leader with real political power of his own and therefore somewhat dangerous for a Prime Minister to punish, a SecDef serves entirely at the pleasure of the President. If Biden were to say "this is unacceptable, get the hell out of my cabinet", Austin could not retaliate by instigating a leadership challenge or something. So while America's political structure might make the offence less serious, it also makes the failure to hold Austin accountable more inexcusable.
Cuts both ways -- it also means you can't use some ministerial matter as a pretense to punish a rival for political reasons.
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It makes me wonder: if every Cabinet official disappeared overnight, how long would it take for it to become common knowledge among top level officials in the departments they manage? How long until it hit the news media?
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