President Biden campaigned for office pledging to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" and take on China. If his much-scrutinized fist bump with Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman was the first indication that might have been little more than empty rhetoric, the White House announced earlier this month that it is nominating for a top position at the Department of Energy the only American who sits on the board of a state-owned Saudi Arabian energy company. David Crane, the nominee to be the Energy Department's undersecretary for infrastructure, sits on the board of the state-owned Saudi Electricity Company, a fact curiously absent from the biography circulated by the administration when it announced Crane’s nomination on August 3.