28 out of 690

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

Politico’s Michael Crowley has a nice piece explaining the missing National Security Council staffers, and the dangers that could cause if there’s an early crisis. Hundreds of briefing papers have been created by Obama’s NSC and sent to Team Trump, but the New York Times reports that no one knows if they’ve been reviewed.

Yet the NSC is ahead of the curve for this administration. Look at the big four departments. There’s no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two departments (along with, bizarrely, Commerce) where Trump has selected a deputy secretary. But no solicitor general, no one at civil rights, no one in the civil division, no one for the national security division.

And the same is true in department after department. Not to mention agencies without anyone at all nominated by the president-elect.

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.

That’s alarming. It’s alarming if it’s incompetence and indifference, and it’s alarming if it’s all part of the cunning plan to destroy the state.

If I had to guess, however, I’d say that the failure to get his administration up and running on time isn’t a deliberate choice by Trump; he just has no idea what he’s doing, and hasn’t surrounded himself with people well-equipped to translate his impulses and his campaign commitments into a full-fledged government. This isn’t exactly a surprise. Recall that the Trump Organization has never had a large bureaucracy and that his campaign didn’t staff up the way campaigns normally do, so he doesn’t really have any relevant management experience. And, of course, he’s never demonstrated any significant knowledge in how the government actually works. The results are likely to be damaging to his presidency, and to the nation.

His presidency should be damaged. The nation? I’d rather not.

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