To be honest, I wasn't thrilled with Trump's picks in his first term either. In particular an unorthodox pick of an oil executive as Secretary of State and for someone who ran on a somewhat isolationist America First foreign policy in fact, Trump also had 5 Cabinet picks rejected in his first term. only one was an initial pick, Andrew Puzder, for Secretary of Labor. The former restaurant operator (of fast food chains like Carl, Jr.) was dogged by worker group complaints and old stories of alleged spousal abuse. He didn't have enough Senate votes. In early 2018 Trump fired his Veteran Affairs Secretary and replaced him with Ronny Jackson, the Physician to the President. Senators argued Jackson lacked managerial experience and there were some complaints from staffers at the White House. He eventually withdrew, probably unable to secure enough Senate votes. Defense Secretary Mattis did not agree with Trump's decisions to cut staffing in Syria and Afghanistan and Trump promoted Patrick Shanahan to replace him. Details emerged of old domestic violence allegations against other family members, and Shanahan withdrew. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats resigned in 2019, and Trump nominated Congressman John Ratcliffe to replace him. Ratcliffe ran into qualification issues and lackluster Senate support and withdrew but Trump resurrected his nomination a second time and prevailed.Finally , Finally, Chad Wolf had been Acting Secretary of Homeland Security since 2019 and was formally nominated in Sept 2020 but the session expired without a floor vote. Trump resubmitted him in Jan. 2021, but when he rebuked Trump on J6, Trump withdrew him. Wolf resigned as acting head about a week later along with 2 other Cabinet secretaries, unhappy over J6. (You can see his Cabinet history here.)
Now, to provide some context, some 29 Cabinet picks have failed their (first) nomination, the majority of those withdrawn. The last one to fail a Senate vote was in the GHW Bush administration. 3 Presidents have at least 4 failed nominations; Tyler, Clinton, and Trump, Gaetz being Trump's latest. If you look at specific Cabinet posts, the ones that seem to cluster are: Defense, Attorney General, Treasury, Intelligence, Commerce, HHS, Veteran Affairs, Labor.
Hence, if I were looking at risk of nomination failure, I would thoroughly vet those first 4 posts, and also Secretary of State, given the centrality of POTUS' role in shaping foreign policy. I don't know his candidate lists or selection processes. There could be an idea, say, you want to reform an organization or an organizational culture, bringing in an outsider with out-of-the-box thinking can be a favorite. One example of this involves Lou Gerstner was CEO Nabisco before IBM hired the cookie man as its CEO. I remember I had made one of my first stock transactions in my retirement account buying IBM shares, not so surprising for a recent MIS professor. I thought I was buying the dip. Nope I had caught a falling knife. Akers, the former CEO, was focuses on a path of divesting the company into separate units of types of technology, like chips, printers, storage, software, etc., i.e., "Baby Blues". Gerstner flipped this strategy on its head. He saw helping customers cope with integrating technologies was a competitive advantage service (including non-IBM products) was a growing business. In fact, in 2006 I worked for Applications on Demand, which basically provided 24x7 managed Oracle ERP applications and databases, in many cases hosted in IBM data centers, a variation of today's cloud computing. In context, IBM developed SQL, a now standardized language used to access and change objects in relational databases developed in products like IBM's DB/2, market leader Oracle RDBMS, and Microsoft SQL Server. I think IBM's market capitalization went up 6 fold until Gerstner retired in 2002 and yes, I made a nice profit off my long-underwater shares.
Maybe Trump had out-of-the-box thinking when he selected ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State in 2017. Maybe he was impressed by Tillerson's business negotiations with Russian entities. Trump undermined Tillerson from the start by alienating and bullying allies while embracing adversarial autocrats. Trump wanted to cut the State Department by a third and Tillerson implemented a hiring freeze. Morale in the department plummeted, and experienced talent left, which Trump saw as a feature not a bug, while he could scapegoat Tillerson for morale issues he himself caused. Somehow Tillerson lasted 14 months before Trump publicly fired him by a tweet, not directly. The relationship with Trump had deteriorated (see here), but, e,g., Trump was still calling Jong Un "Rocket Man": later Trump would flip his position and even steal souvenirs like letters and a cocktailnapkin among Presidential records. And how does he replace him? With his CIA director Pompeo. Who better aspires confidence like telling a diplomat "I know what you did last summer."?
Who would I prefer to be Secretary of State? There are answers to that. I would like to see someone with proven negotiation skills, international exposure (e.g., trade negotiations), broad familiarity with foreign affairs, and principled like Vance who resigned in the Carter Administration when Carter made a failed attempt to free the Iranian hostages using the military, undermining Vance's attempts to stitch together an economic response among allies as an alternative to military operations. Another example was former Dem nominee William Jennings Bryan who served under Wilson and opposed American intervention in WWI, resigning. I don't see Trump hiring anyone who is not a yes man. i just discussed how Tillerman wanted dialog with North Korea while Trump was bellicose and mocking its head of state. I would like to see some exposure to foreign service, international agreements (like free trade), maybe something like a US ambassador or envoy, including the United Nations, leadership in the State Department, etc.
Sen. Rubio, Trump's choice for Secretary of State, is pretty much a hawk/neo-con, he has been hawkish on Venezuela, Gaza via Israel, and Iran; Trump professes to be the peace President but has selected neo-cons/hawks like John Bolton in the past. Trump tries to justify it by saying that he likes to play good cop/bad cop (he plays the former, of course) and argues that the "bad cops" are effective at changing the status quo and taking things in the right direction. That comes across as a self-serving rationalization. In fact, Trump has been playing a bad cop on his own, threatening to cut off NATO protection to allies not spending enough on military spending and taking credit for any related spending. I think Trump's selections have set a negative tone for international partners and expectations. As a noninterventionist i would oppose Rubio.
When I initially started this essay, Trumpkin loyalist Matt Gaetz, the former high-profile extremist Florida Congressman (recall his feud with former Speaker McCarthy) was Trump's choice to be Attorney General. I tweeted on multiple occasions against this; Trump has repeatedly promised retribution against his prosecutions on J6 and classified documents, never mind Russiagate and what he terms a "politicized Justice system" under the Biden Administration. I've written a number of posts on Trump's egregious behavior and will not review it here, but on Russiagate, I think Trump publicly asking Russia's help in recovering Clinton's emails and having Junior meet with Russians looking for political dirt on Clinton were improper and contributed to speculations of collusion. His attempts to stop the Mueller investigation also contributed to the impression 'where there's smoke, there's fire'. Mueller was a rare widely respected/trusted Republican, and Trump only hurt himself by trying to intervene instead of waiting confidently for the investigation to run its course.
As for J6, it was entirely illegal and improper to insert himself into state elections like Georgia's trying to flip results, to pressure Pence to illegally and unconstitutionally block official state elector votes to keep Biden's votes below the 270 electoral votes needed. As to the classified documents case, he had no rights for the classified documents he stole, and he had no right to sidestep a lawful subpoena for the remaining classified documents. These were not fabricated charges. And you have no right to pursue reprisal prosecutions against prosecutors or Congressional investigators for doing their jobs.
But more specifically to Gaetz, he never served as a prosecutor on either the state or federal levels. There are also character issues such as the allegations he paid for and had sex with a 17-year-old minor. The House allegedly was in the process of finalizing/releasing the report when Gaetz resigned from Congress. In addition reportedly at least 5 Republican senators opposed his nomination: Collins, Murkowski, Curtis (Romney's successor), McConnell, and Mullin (OK) (the Senate has 53 Republicans, meaning Gaetz was mathematically eliminated because Vance (VP elect) needs 50 to vote in a full Senate. So Gaetz withdrew (thank God).
Trump has named Pam Bondi, Florida's former AG, I don't object to her as much as Gaetz, but I loathed her overzealous enforcement of price-gouging laws, and I would prefer someone with former federal experience like ex-US Attorney Chris Christie.
The next one I particular oppose and have frequently tweeted against unqualified Pete Hegseth, Trump's selection for Defense Secretary, a former FNC weekend host, has no military leadership experience, no background in foreign policy . He has some military experience but so do thousands of others. Quoting Higgins, a former RNC researcher: "According to my professional assessment at the time, Hegseth was unqualified for the more junior positions he was being considered for in 2016 [for a more junior post], and eight additional years spent at Fox News has not made him any more qualified to run the Department of Defense, an organization with 2 million employees, and one that regularly interacts with foreign military leaders and is critical to our national security and global standing."
Another questionable pick is RFK, Jr. for HHS. RFK is infamous for falsely alleging a link between vaccines and autism. I am strongly pro-vax. not only is RFK, Jr without any relevant experience or expertise in public health, his crackpot anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories and misinformation pose a threat to public health. Quoting Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law: “To say that RFK Jr. is unqualified is a considerable understatement...The minimum qualification for being the head of the Department of Health and Human Services is fidelity to science and scientific evidence, and he spent his entire career fomenting distrust in public health and undermining science at every step of the way.” ["[RFK] would have sway over health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that fall under the purview of HHS"]
Kash Patel is also an unacceptable choice to head the FBI. He is a blatantly partisan hack who has basically promised to implement Trump's explicit vows of "retribution" for Russiagate, etc. As former AG Barr noted: "Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency.” "[Others] view Patel as a personification of Trump’s vow to pursue retribution against his enemies once he takes office. Critics fear Patel’s fierce loyalty to Trump and his history of embracing conspiracy theories, like a false contention that the “deep state” attempted to overthrow Trump’s presidency, would influence his actions at the FBI. They point to his deep investment in the MAGA movement as evidence of his motivations and of how steeped he is in politics, something that both Democrats and Republicans contend they want to keep out of the law enforcement agency."
In summary, I normally believe in giving a President a lot of discretion over his QUALIFIED selections One general problem is that Trump thinks he's above the law and he puts personal loyalty over duty to Constitution and the law. That's why he fired Comey, who had been a lifelong Republican, as FBI director. FBI directors normally have 10 year terms. Trump himself chose Wray (another Republican) to replace Comey, but evidently he didn't do enough to purge the "deep state" so he is replacing him with Trumpkin loyalist Kash Patel (authoe of a pro-Trump children's book) with no obvious qualifications. Trump has a long enemies list, including journalists, politicians (especially the J6 Committee) and various 'Deep State" bureaucrats allegedly conspiring against him. The above choices were purely political either loyalties or campaign allies (like RFK who withdrew from his independent candidacy and endorsed him), none with compelling qualifications. In the case of Rubio, I'm not crazy about Trump nominating hawks which he rationalizes as playing good cop, bad cop. We can't afford unqualified people as AG, FBI director, Defense Secretary, HHS or others.
