Contributors

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Trump's Dumpster Fire Nominations

Donald Trump is the most unqualified and incompetent person to sit in the Oval Office in at least a century. Is it any wonder that the few people he's managed to appoint to his administration are equally incompetent and unqualified?

Two appointments are especially egregious, both made in the last few days.

The first is Jim Bridenstine, a congressman from Oklahoma. Trump has picked him to be the head of NASA. The Frank of Bridenstine is a politician, not a scientist, engineer, or even a manager. The senators from Florida, the state that is perhaps most affected by this pick, Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson (Republican and Democrat), denounced the choice:
Rubio said he and Nelson “share the same concerns” and worry Bridenstine’s “political baggage” would weigh him down in a GOP-led Senate that has grown increasingly resistant to Trump. NASA can’t afford that, Rubio said.

“I just think it could be devastating for the space program. Obviously, being from Florida, I’m very sensitive to anything that slows up NASA and its mission,” Rubio told POLITICO.

“It’s the one federal mission which has largely been free of politics and it’s at a critical juncture in its history,” Rubio said. “I would hate to see an administrator held up -- on [grounds of] partisanship, political arguments, past votes, or statements made in the past -- because the agency can’t afford it and it can’t afford the controversy.”
Trump and Clovis
Trump then nominated Sam Clovis, Trump's Iowa campaign manager and a talk show host, to be chief scientist of the USDA. The law requires the post to be filled by a scientist or educator.

But Clovis has no background in agriculture, veterinary, economics or any kind of science whatsoever. His degree is in "public administration," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

In Trump's eyes, Clovis' main qualification appears to be his weight: Trump probably figures a guy that fat must like to eat, so he put Clovis in charge of the food.

The common thread for these nominees? Neither believes that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. But a large part of both agencies' mandate is monitoring the effects of climate change on weather and crop production.

This continues a trend in the Trump administration of appointing people uniquely unsuited to the jobs they're supposed to be doing, much like Trump himself.

In addition to picking bad people, Trump is way behind in making nominations. There are 596 positions requiring Senate confirmation, and Trump has only filled 117. He has formally nominated 106 positions. There are 43 more awaiting formal nomination.

That leaves 330 positions with no nomination: Trump has only filled 20% of the positions in his administration seven months in. This is probably a good thing. Since Trump will only pick the worst people to run these agencies, the fewer appointments he makes the less damage he can do.

At this same point in their presidencies, Obama had 310 appointments confirmed, Bush II had 294, Clinton had 252, and Bush I had 208. Trump is having a hell of a time finding good help.

But some posts cannot go unfilled without causing major problems.

One of the most glaring vacancies is the ambassador to South Korea. Obama told Trump that his number one foreign policy problem was going to be North Korea and its missile and nuclear programs. Our North Korea strategy depends on South Korea, a key ally and host to 35,000 American troops, forming the front line against North Korea.

But Trump has insulted South Korea by not appointing an ambassador, threatening to cancel our free trade agreement with them, and claiming that the south has been appeasing the north.

Meanwhile, Trump has been making hollow threat after hollow threat against North Korea. He now looks like an impotent blowhard every time Kim Jong-un launches another missile and detonates another nuclear bomb.

Trump is a bragging idiot who does not know when to shut up: the first thing out of his mouth was a threat to nuke North Korea if they even said anything bad to us. So then they launched a missile over Japan and detonated their largest ever nuke. Trump did nothing.

Kim crossed Trump's red line, spat on it, jumped all over, shot a missile over it and blew up a nuclear bomb on it. And Trump just sputtered impotently. Kim knows that Trump will not start a war and Kim enjoys making Trump will like a fool every day: North Korea's nuclear missile program is now a fait accompli; it will now demand a seat at the table with the United States, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Britain, France, and all the other nuclear powers.

This is not Trump's -- or Obama's -- fault: it started with Reagan's invasion of Grenada, which put small dictatorships on notice. Then Bush I invaded Iraq, and Iraq's WMD programs were dismantled. Then George W. Bush made the axis of evil speech, telling Iraq, Iran and North Korea he was going to destroy them. Bush then invaded Iraq. Saddam was captured and killed. Libya gave up its nuclear program. And then Qaddafi was overthrown and killed.

W's tough talk and foolish invasions literally forced North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear technology to avoid similar fates.

But this shows how utterly worthless Trump's bombast is in the real world of foreign policy. He starts out with the biggest, most dire threats. When North Korea blows him off and he does nothing, there's no way to escalate the rhetoric. He's blown his entire wad, right off the bat, appearing to all the world like the impotent old man he is.

This is why Trump cannot find a suitable nominee for the South Korean ambassador. This is why he picks hacks and idiots like Clovis and Bridenstine to staff his administration: no competent person wants to be tainted by having worked in the Trump administration.

Besides, they all know Trump will just blame them every time he screws up, and he'll fire them.

What sane, competent, honest public servant would want to serve in the dumpster fire that is the Trump administration?

No comments: