Political analyst Charlie Cook expects President-elect Joe Biden and his administration to be supportive of the poultry industry.
Cook, author of the Cook Political Report, spoke during the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council (USAPEEC) virtual winter meeting on December 17. In addition to authoring the report that bears his name, he has provided political commentary for the National Journal, NBC, and other television networks.
Cook indicated the poultry industry could have confidence in Biden, even though his ties to the industry are indirect.
“Biden has never really been an ag guy, per se. I don’t believe he was, even in his earliest years, ever on the agriculture committee,” said Cook.
However, when Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate, he represented a state known for the 4 Cs: chemicals, corporations, credit cards and chickens. Because Delaware has a $1.7 billion poultry industry and 70% of its farm income comes from poultry, Biden is unlikely to ignore the poultry industry, Cook said.
“This has not ever been his specialty, but my guess is he was always fairly supportive of the industry,” said Cook.
Comparing Biden to previous presidents
Cook said in some ways, Biden is “the opposite of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.”
“He’s a fairly straightforward, conventionally thinking 78-year-old Irish guy. He tends to be kind of old fashioned, and tends to be sentimental,” he said. “Family is everything and he sees it as the core unit of society.”
He also described Biden as very loyal, even to a fault. Biden is also a man of integrity, and Cook said the controversy surrounding his son Hunter is probably “the only scandal you will probably see that touches anywhere close to Biden.”
In comparing Biden to the four presidents prior to Trump, Biden will likely be the most centrist of the five. He said George W. Bush was the most conservative of the group, while Obama was the most liberal. He described George H.W. Bush as center right and Bill Clinton as center left. Cook places Biden between the elder Bush and Clinton in terms of political ideology. Cook anticipates the partisanship to simmer down in Washington, but it will take longer for the political divide among the citizenry to ease.
One thing that will also set Biden apart from other presidents in recent history is that he has a relationship with members of Congress. Only George H.W. Bush came close in this capacity, Cook said.
Starting in 1977, the U.S. went on a 12-year stretch where the president was a governor who had never served in the U.S. House or Senate. First it was Jimmy Carter, then Ronald Reagan.
After the elder Bush’s term, it was back to 16 more years of governors in the presidency with Clinton and George W. Bush. While Obama had a brief tenure in the U.S. Senate, Cook said he didn’t foster relationships like George H.W. Bush did or Biden has.
“When Barack Obama was in the Senate, he was a pretty aloof guy; he didn’t create a lot of friendships. In the second half of his four years in the Senate, he was basically gone, campaigning for president,” Cook said.
Biden on trade
Cook does not expect to see Biden fighting any significant trade wars. Under Biden, there won’t be the “saber rattling,” like there was with Trump. Cook said Biden will be “much, much, much more like George W. Bush and Clinton, in that he will be “fairly conventional” and “mainstream.”
However, Cook said it would not be surprising to see Biden take up a “stronger role with China than pre-Trump presidents.”
Vilsack appointment
Biden’s appointment of Tom Vilsack to the position of U.S. agriculture secretary was a safe one, Cook said. Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, gained familiarity with Vilsack, who was also agriculture secretary for all but one week of Obama’s tenure as president.
“I think for your industry, Sonny Perdue, from my understanding, has been a terrific secretary of agriculture. My guess is that Tom Vilsack knows his department. You would know better than I whether Vilsack was good or not so good,” Cook said. “You are going to have someone who understands the department and is certainly pro-ag.”
Cook said there had been talk that Marcia Fudge was under consideration for the secretary’s job, and he believes her focus would have been more on nutrition issues than production agriculture issues.
“I think that was one place where you dodged a bullet,” Cook said.
House Agriculture Committee chairman
With Rep. Collin Peterson as the outgoing House Agriculture Committee chairman, Cook said the industry is losing a chairman who “very, very much understood agriculture.” With Rep. David Scott as the incoming chairman, a lot of that expertise could be lost.
“He has been pretty friendly to the poultry industry, as someone representing Georgia ought to be,” Cook said, although he did say there could be some concerns about him. While Scott is from Georgia, which is a major poultry state, Scott’s constituency is more urban.
Scott has been a longtime committee member, but his presence on the committee, Cook said, has been relatively low profile.
Cook believes because Scott is 75 and has had some health problems, he will not likely be on the committee for much longer, adding it is possible he might step down before the next farm bill is drafted.
