Cabinet chiefs past and present

This column’s thumbnail history of the post of Cabinet chief proposes to start with a left-handed defence of its current occupant, Manuel Adorni – not least because he is a prime example of an important reason for creating this position in the first place. Not exactly innocent but hardly the only official unable to resist such intense media scrutiny in the month since his wife was a co-passenger on a Manhattan-bound presidential aircraft. This columnist remains unimpressed by all the mountains of dirt so painstakingly dug up on Adorni over the past month – not so much because his shabby gated community house and his tiddly Caballito flat bear no comparison to the mansions of AFA bosses Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia and Pablo Toviggino as because of a deep conviction that the ‘$LIBRA’ cryptocurrency scandal dogging the Milei siblings is infinitely more serious, but all this Adorni outcry is drawing fire away. In short, the lightning rod the post of Cabinet chief was always designed to be.

Why are almost all the media taking their eye off the ball and chasing after Adorni instead of probing other scandals? This journalist suspects that this is because his scalp (hair implants and all) is within their reach whereas Milei’s shaggy moptop is not – Adorni is vulnerable while the President is still Teflon, despite sliding opinion polls, and they would rather go after the low-hanging fruit.

Nor was Adorni talking utter nonsense when he hints darkly at friendly fire. Suspicion does not only fall on star spin doctor Santiago Caputo for being only too prone to undermine any protegé of his internal arch-rival, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei – just before this scandal the latter had eased Senator Patricia Bullrich out of next year’s City mayoral candidacy in Adorni’s favour so any “cui bono” logic would include her. Nor would the government members who could be suspected of being only too happy to let somebody else take the heat be limited to the Milei siblings.

The Cabinet chief’s role as whipping boy (a term which can resist gender neutrality since none of the post’s 20 occupants have ever been female) can be traced back to the post’s origins in the 1995 constitutional reform. That reform was the fruit of the Olivos Pact consensus between then Peronist President Carlos Menem and his Radical predecessor Raúl Alfonsín – since the former was exclusively interested in his own re-election, everything else can safely be attributed to the latter. Alfonsín was a rare case of a politician whose idealistic and pragmatic instincts were both strongly developed. His idealistic side saw a Cabinet chief as fostering parliamentary democracy within a strong presidency along the model of the French premier acting as a bridge between the executive and legislative branches. But Alfonsín was also keenly aware of the premature end of his own presidency and saw a Cabinet chief as a means of taking the rap for a loss of confidence while allowing presidential terms to be completed – he also envisaged a fall guy. Whatever Alfonsín thought, Menem had other ideas and he was in charge. The two men he appointed to this nominal helm, Eduardo Bauzá and Jorge Rodríguez, were a far cry from being any premier, pure party hacks and totally subordinate – not even Nick Cave’s “red right hand” to do the dirty work because this would be too much empowerment for an ultra-presidential democracy.

In 1999 the Radical Fernando de la Rúa was elected on a platform of convertibility continuity with greater institutional respect and his first choice for Cabinet chief, the intellectual Rodolfo Terragno (a leading architect of the Alliance with dissident Peronists bringing De la Rúa to power), perhaps had the most institutionally ambitious ideas on the post and might have given it more substance but his critical attitude towards suspected corruption (including the ‘Banelcogate’ graft scandal in the Senate) had him lasting only 10 months. His successor Chrystian Colombo (a descendant of Comodoro Rivadavia Boers not entirely free of corruption suspicions himself) saw his role as wheeling and dealing with mostly Peronist governors in a fragile context rather than as a head of ministers. Three more Cabinet chiefs in the fortnight between the collapse of the Alliance and the caretaker presidency of Eduardo Duhalde hardly worth naming (who has ever heard of Luis Lusquiños?). Duhalde’s picks did not last much longer – four months of Chaco’s Jorge Capitanich (on leave from the Senate) followed by a full year of Alfredo Atanasof (a non-entity with nothing more important than ambassador to Bulgaria since). 

But their successor not only had the longest stint until now (over five years) but also eventually reached the presidency by a circuitous route – Alberto Fernández, Néstor Kirchner’s 2003 campaign manager rewarded for making Frente para la Victoria live up to its name. In many ways Fernández saw his new position as a continuation of his previous work of constructing a victorious front via “transversal” politics to the degree of making Mendoza Radical Governor Julio César Cleto Cobos the 2007 running-mate of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Otherwise he generally toed the Kirchnerite line over national politics until the clash with the farming sector over grain export duties whose wisdom he questioned (as did Cobos), resigning in 2008 and turning into an acid critic of Kirchnerism until abruptly becoming their presidential candidate in 2019.

Fernández was followed by Sergio Massa, who played a role in renationalising Aerolíneas Argentinas but was gone in just under a year, following his predecessor’s path of growing dissent, only to rejoin the fold in 2019. Then Aníbal Fernández (in two stints totalling almost 40 months), Juan Manuel Medina (almost two years) and Capitanich again (15 months this time) but none of them were given much say by the ultra-presidential CFK.

The youthful Marcos Peña (then 38), a key figure in Mauricio Macri’s 2015 victory, was the Cabinet chief throughout his Presidency and one of the few holders of that post to influence policy, enjoying Macri’s respect, but his preference for gradualism was already questioned at that time for the failure to transform Argentina and even more nowadays in the light of the apparent success of Javier Milei’s shock policies on some fronts.

On reaching the presidency in 2019, Alberto Fernández, the campaign manager made Cabinet chief by Néstor Kirchner, decided to bestow the same reward on his own campaign manager, Santiago Cafiero, but the latter was increasingly criticised as a lightweight and eventually replaced by Tucumán Governor Juan Luis Manzur, who promised a hands-on style which he never really delivered. Then-AFI intelligence chief Agustín Rossi was moved in to replace him early in 2023 and headed the Cabinet throughout that election year, doubling as Massa’s running-mate in the second half of the year.

Adorni is Milei’s third Cabinet chief (with no assurance that he will be the last). Milei’s first choice was Corporación América’s Nicolás Posse, a pal over almost two decades, but he only lasted five months in office – his downfall was widely attributed to the endemic infighting plaguing the libertarian government but might well have been due to being rather better at meshing with foreign diplomats and prospective investors than with politicians in Congress where La Libertad Avanza then had such a puny foothold. A forte of his successor, the veteran Guillermo Francos – paradoxically enough, his exit in the hour of midterm victory last October was attributed to being at loggerheads with Santiago Caputo yet his replacement is notoriously a protegé of the latter’s rival, Karina Milei.

To be continued (or “FIN,” as Adorni might say).