The only good thing that can be said of President Joe Biden’ s administration officials is that they are extraordinarily talented at failing upwards. Oh — and they’re also the most diverse bunch of bureaucrats ever.

“The Cabinet is majority people of color for the first time in history,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week. “The Cabinet is majority female for the first time in history. A majority of White House senior staff identify as female. Forty percent of White House senior staff identify as part of the racially diverse communities, and a record seven assistants to the president are openly LGBTQ+.”

The reason Jean-Pierre felt the need to labor this point is because there is no other way to defend Biden’s Cabinet picks, especially not after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ’s abysmal response to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. Not only did it take Buttigieg 10 days to even acknowledge the derailment, but every time he’s been asked about it since he’s made it clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about.

He’s blamed the Trump administration for repealing an Obama-era regulation mandating updated braking technology but failed to explain why his Transportation Department hasn’t reinstated the regulation in the two years since Trump left office if it was so important. He’s also claimed the accident is proof that trains carrying toxic and flammable cargo should be required to have at least two crew members on board, when the Southern Norfolk train that derailed had three members on board at the time of the crash. And, best of all, Buttigieg has suggested the derailment potentially could have been prevented if the rail workers on board had had paid sick leave, even though there is no evidence at all that a lack of time off contributed to, let alone caused the disaster.

Maybe Biden assumed the Transportation Department would be able to run itself. Or perhaps he believed Buttigieg would be able to grow into the role. Regardless, it’s obvious he never should have given this job to a guy whose only credentials were having been the mayor of a Midwestern town and running a failed presidential campaign that he gave up to endorse Biden. But of course, as Jean-Pierre so aptly put it, it certainly didn’t hurt that Buttigieg is gay.

Alas, it could always be worse. Buttigieg could be Vice President Kamala Harris , who is so bad at her job that her own party and many of her former close allies are ready to dump her for someone else. Or maybe they’re just not as ready as Harris to “work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues … and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together ... we will work on this together."

So well said.

It was no secret Biden tapped Harris for the vice presidency only because he made a public promise to choose a black woman as his running mate, just as it was no secret that Biden appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, whose only experience in the healthcare sector was prosecuting nuns who disagreed with Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate because leftist activists wanted Hispanic representation in Biden’s Cabinet. But as it happens, appointing people to positions of leadership just because they check off certain identity politics boxes is a great way to get stuck with some very mediocre options.

No wonder, then, that the White House feels the need to play up its contributions to diversity. Biden’s officials may be so ineffective and incompetent that they’re actively damaging his presidency, but damn it all! at least their skin colors and sexual orientations fit the bill.