OPINION - Editorial

'Round and 'round

Donald Trump’s revolving cabinet

It's anybody's guess who'll be in and who'll be out of our president's cabinet tomorrow. Or whose name he'll be floating next for a top position in these currently less than United States of America.

The first and one of the greatest American presidents and commanders, George Washington, insisted that both parties and then-dominant philosophies be represented in his cabinet, Federalists and anti-Federalists alike. The political descendants of both in the remarkably continuous history of this Republic continue to fight it out at the polls.

Happily, the war between the parties has been fought with ballots instead of bullets for the most part. There have been tragic exceptions to that peaceful rule. See the late unpleasantness of 1861-65. But somehow balance always manages to be restored, as inevitably as water seeks its own level.

But this president, it scarcely needs to be said, doesn't seek political diversity in his ever whirling circle of advisers, but political uniformity, and is apparently determined to keep hiring and firing until he gets a cabinet that looks like a political image of himself. It's either his way or the highway, and the traffic out there can be something fierce as he keeps shaking up the top level of his national-security team, which never seems to enjoy a moment of job security.

At last and instantly changeable report, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is no longer one of the president's confidantes, if he ever was. Now he's a former secretary of State. His slippery place is to be taken by the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, who's said to have moved closer to Donald Trump's isolationist opinions, which now sail under the banner of America First.

As if there weren't enough names floating around in the electronic ether, the president has thrown more into the air, not knowing where or if they'll stick around. Nor need all the job prospects be young comers. The president, quoting himself, says 70-year-old television commenter Larry Kudlow has replaced Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council that operates out of the White House. Why? "He now has come around to believing in tariffs." Count him a new recruit to protectionist politics. But if he doesn't fit in with the president's inner circle, he may be fortunate, for His Trumpness can be a fickle boss, letting his courtiers go with the same speed that he puts them on the executive payroll.

Here's hoping all these bidders for presidential favor take a good look at one another at the end of their night shift, for who knows how many of them will still be there in the morning. An office seeker could get lost in the swarm as under-secretaries to under-secretaries buzz around this administration. Perhaps the best thing to be said about the institutional chaos ushered in by all the Trumpeteers is what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: exactly nothing. This administration defies description, though its critics can scarcely contain themselves when giving it less than rave reviews. To quote U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee:

"I have been warning for more than a year about the White House's deficient background check process--as well as specific officials who have been granted access to our nation's most closely guarded secrets despite derogatory information known to White House officials." In view of our president's loose-lipped way with information, his whole administration might be summed up as one big security risk. People are fired with such rapidity, it comes as refreshing when somebody resigns because of nothing more than principle.

But it still happens. And when it does, it's cause for celebration. So keep the good thought, America: Somewhere somehow a sense of honor still prevails on self-respecting occasion.

Editorial on 03/17/2018

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