Trump's picks: The good, the questionable, and the crazy

Former Attorney General Bill Barr says Donald Trump once told him “the recipe for a really good tweet is just the right amount of crazy.” That might be a good recipe for tweeting, but it’s a potentially disastrous one for picking Cabinet members.

Trump has been selecting Cabinet members at a breakneck pace. He must have made up his mind on some nominees during the campaign — perhaps while watching Fox News in between campaign events. (The selection of Matt Gaetz, though, reportedly came together shortly before it was announced).

The result is a mixture of good nominees, dubious ones, and a few that seem insane.

Before looking at some examples of all three, I want to make two points. First, nominees who look good on paper often prove not so good in office. These are tough jobs.

It’s also sometimes the case that nominees who lack the paper credentials indicating fitness for the job turn out to be okay or better. That’s a rarer occurrence, though.

Second, although presidential nominees for Cabinet jobs should receive substantial deference from the Senate, they should not be confirmed automatically. The fact that a president won a decisive victory doesn’t change this.

Barack Obama’s first two choices for Attorney General failed. Obama won more decisively than Trump did this year. [CORRECTION: It was Clinton’s first two nominees who failed, not Obama’s. Like Obama, Clinton won more electoral votes in 1992 than Trump did this year.)

Now, let’s turn to six of Trump nominees.

The Good

Marco Rubio seems like an excellent choice for Secretary of State. In fact, I think he would be a good choice for president.

Rubio is deeply knowledgeable about foreign affairs. He serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has been involved in foreign policy debates for years, and has usually been on the right side of them. He’s a hawk when it comes to China and a backer of Ukraine in its efforts to survive Russia’s naked aggression.

John Ratcliffe seems like an ideal choice for Director of the CIA. In the first Trump administration, he served as Director of National Intelligence. Before that, he was a congressman from Texas and served on the House Intelligence Committee.

As Director of National Intelligence, Ratcliffe received criticism for contradicting some of the intelligence community’s assessment and sidelining career officials. But the intelligence community is often wrong, sometimes spectacularly, and it’s likely that some of its career officials deserved to be sidelined. As CIA Director, he may need to sideline a few more.

The Questionable

Pete Hegseth is an odd choice for Secretary of Defense. As Byron York says:

Despite his impressive qualifications — Princeton, Harvard, two Bronze Stars, and professional success — Hegseth does not have the resume one would expect from a secretary of defense, most notably the management experience to run one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, with an $841 billion budget this year.

It’s true that Hegseth has expertise in matters pertaining to veterans. Accordingly, he would have been an excellent choice to head the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Hegseth has also led the charge against wokeness in the military. This would have qualified him for a high-level DoD position from which he could focus on rooting out that rot.

But there were other, more experienced and knowledgeable conservatives who could have taken on wokeness. Why didn’t Trump turn to a conservative Senator from the Armed Services Committee like Tom Cotton who has fought that battle or to a former Pentagon official who was sidelined for fighting it? Why not Mike Pompeo? What did he do to deserve banishment from Trump world?

Kristi Noem’s selection for Director of Homeland Security is being questioned from both the left and the right. This doesn’t make her a bad choice, but the attacks from conservatives have bite.

The conservative case against Noem is based mainly on the fact that as Governor of South Dakota she failed to stand up to business interests on issues like keeping boys out of girls sports. She also comes in for criticism for accepting Somali refugees without proper vetting.

Clearly, Noem has not been as committed to conservative causes as she pretends to be on television. She seems, instead, to prefer the path of least resistance.

However, Noem probably can be counted on to implement Trump’s homeland security policies, including those relating to illegal immigration. In a Trump administration, that will be the path of least resistance.

Liberals argue that Noem’s experience as governor leaves her short on the credentials needed for this job. However, the very first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, was a governor. Noem seems like a competent administrator and that, along with the right line on protecting the country, is the main requirement for the job.

Assuming the confirmation process goes okay for Hegseth and Noem, the Senate should defer to Trump and confirm them. However, both appear to be unfortunate — or at least suboptimal — picks.

The crazy

Matt Gaetz heads this list. Now we know why Trump wants to make recess appointments, even though his party has a Senate majority.

Gaetz practiced law for less than two years before running successfully for political office. This lack of legal experience alone renders him unfit to be Attorney General, in my opinion.

But the problems with Gaetz run deeper. I agree with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board:

This is a bad choice that would undermine confidence in the law. Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Gaetz’s law degree from William and Mary, but it might as well be a doctorate in outrage theater. He’s a performer and provocateur, and his view is that the more explosions he can cause, the more attention he can get. “It’s impossible to get canceled if you’re on every channel,” he once said. “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.”

Mr. Gaetz has no interest in governing. When Republicans took control of the House in 2022, it was with a small margin. Rather than work to get things done, Mr. Gaetz sabotaged Speaker Kevin McCarthy before finally leading a rebellion to oust him. Eight Republican malcontents plunged the GOP into weeks of embarrassing paralysis, since Mr. Gaetz had no alternative that could command a majority. . . .

Trump selected Gaetz for one reason: his belief that Gaetz, out of blind loyalty, will use the Justice Department to take on the president’s enemies. No AG, whether appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, should ever assume that role

Trump says that Gaetz will “root out systemic corruption at the DOJ.” There is no systemic corruption at the Department, but there is systemic bias that needs to be dealt with.

However, there are many qualified conservatives who could have taken on the bias, and done it with far more credibility than Gaetz, who is under investigation for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and seeking to obstruct government investigations.

Gaetz’s nomination isn’t just crazy; it’s disgraceful. The Senate almost certainly will not confirm him.

Trump might then try to install Gaetz via a recess appointment. This anti-constitutional scheme threatens great mischief, including but not limited to its future use by Democratic presidents.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice for Director of National Intelligence, is also a terrible pick. It’s not just that she has no significant intelligence background — in the House, she never served on the Intelligence Committee.

More importantly, she’s an apologist for anti-American thug rulers. In 2017, she cozied up to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian butcher who had just used chemical weapons to slaughter children.

She has also been a fount of pro-Putin propaganda. Writing on social media on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, she said the war could have been prevented if the U.S. and its Western allies had recognized Russia's "legitimate security concerns" about Ukraine's bid to join NATO.

More recently, Gabbard went further. She told Tucker Carlson that the Biden administration’s refusal to guarantee that Ukraine would remain outside NATO “just points to one conclusion. . .which is, they actually want. . .Russia to invade Ukraine.”

Gabbard has also called it an "undeniable fact" that there were US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. This claim appears to be lacking support.

Gabbard’s embrace of pro-Putin conspiracy theories — Biden wanted Russia to invade Ukraine, the U.S. funds bio-labs in Ukraine — renders her manifestly unfit for any foreign policy position, much less the directorship of our intelligence community. The Senate needs to reject her nomination.

Trump has wasted no time in unleashing “crazy” into his Cabinet nominations. Let’s hope he won’t unleash any more of it.