Last week, President Trump announced to the UN General Assembly that the United States was prepared to "destroy" North Korea if necessary, a provocation all the more jarring given America's nuclear arsenal.
If only we had an actual U.S. ambassador to South Korea to navigate the crisis--we don't. The administration's disregard for filling ambassadorships and critical State Department posts is increasingly disturbing.
The Partnership for Public Service sponsors a "political appointee tracker," which shows that out of 601 executive positions requiring U.S. Senate confirmation, more than half have no nominee. For now, political norms dictate the need for executive leadership.
Whether this is strategic inattention or just garden-variety inattention, it doesn't matter. The president needs to get moving on his appointments.
Editorial on 09/28/2017