"Retreads," "going backward," "going back to the future" - those are some of the words that have been thrown around to describe the Cabinet that President-elect Joe Biden has begun to put together.
But the career politician himself had a lipstick-on-a-pig comment Friday about what the leaders would bring to his administration - "bold new thinking."
Many of those bold new thinkers the 78-year-old Biden has named were part of the Obama administration that voters were so tired of that they voted down Obama's "third term" in the potential presidency of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Bold new thinking is not what one usually associates with 77-year-old presidential climate envoy designee John Kerry, 74-year-old secretary of the treasury designee Janet Yellen, 70-year-old secretary of agriculture designee Tom Vilsack and 68-year-old secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) designee Marcia Fudge.
That's not to say senior citizens can't have bold new thinking but that the bold old thinking of some of these nominees didn't do the country a lot of good.
Take Kerry, for instance. It was under his watch as secretary of state for Obama that the U.S. entered into the Paris climate agreement that all sides agreed would never make a significant difference on climate, and on the Iran nuclear agreement that nearly two out of three Americans opposed.
Vilsack already is getting pushback from the ascendant far left wing of the left-wing party for his history as a lobbyist and for favoring corporate agriculture over independent family farms.
Fudge, as this page noted Monday, had moaned that Blacks were always tabbed for the HUD spot and that she deserved better.
Meanwhile, Biden also named Susan Rice, who served in both the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations, to led the White House Domestic Policy Council. It was Rice, who as national security adviser, was coached to lie for the Obama administration on why violence broke out in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, that wound up with the deaths of the American ambassador and three other Americans.
Other opposition is cropping up against homeland secretary designee Alejandro Mayorkas, who could not muster a single Republican vote during his previous confirmation as deputy homeland security secretary in 2013, and retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the defense secretary designee, who will need a special waiver from federal law to take the job.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has said Biden wants a Cabinet "that looks like America," but so far the Cabinet looks more like him and a whole lot like the administration that voters rejected four years ago.