The editors of the Washington Post have come out in opposition to Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, urging President-Elect Trump to pick someone else:
Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s planned nomination to become defense secretary reflects a failure of vetting by President-elect Donald Trump. Mr. Hegseth lacks the temperament, judgment, character and experience to lead the world’s most complex and lethal military organization. Fortunately, Mr. Trump has several better options to manage the Defense Department and its 3 million employees who would sail through the Senate and serve as good stewards of the Pentagon.
Here are their alternative recommendations:
Mr. Trump has other options, even if imperfect, who are largely aligned with his desire to modernize and transform the military. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa would fly through. She’s a combat veteran who has spoken of her own experiences with sexual assault and understands the need to project American power overseas. Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida is slated to become national security adviser, but he would be a solid choice for defense secretary. Other names in the mix include Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, though the GOP cannot spare the departure of any more House members, as the party will hold only a narrow majority in the chamber next year. Another option being discussed is Elbridge Colby, a former Pentagon official and close ally of Vice President-elect JD Vance.
One name Mr. Trump has reportedly been floating to associates is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who served as a Navy lawyer before running for Congress. Mr. DeSantis has the requisite experience and relishes the cultural battles that Mr. Trump apparently wants Mr. Hegseth to fight. He has also shown a willingness to assert his independence at times, which is why we’d be surprised if Mr. Trump gave him such an important role. But, for all our disagreements with him on policy, Mr. DeSantis would be far better than Mr. Hegseth and probably could be confirmed — barring disqualifying new information from the confirmation process.
I have literally no opinion about any of Mr. Trump’s appointments. I don’t think they’re particularly important. Trump clearly does not adhere to Ike’s staff management approach to the presidency. I believe he wants to call all of the shots himself, something I think is actually impossible for a job as gargantuan as the presidency, and is frustrated that he can’t make his approach work.
I have no idea whether Mr. Hegseth is good, bad, or indifferent. I also have no idea how I would go about determining that. No third party reports can be relied on. Equally I have no idea what people think the qualifications of cabinet officers are. AFAICT the only qualification is that they need to be native-born citizens to meet presidential succession requirements.
“AFAICT the only qualification is that they need to be native-born citizens to meet presidential succession requirements”
Actually no. If a cabinet member doesn’t meet Presidential succession requirements, they simply are not in the succession order.
Examples are Madeline Albright, Alejandro Mayorkas, Elaine Chao.
The only qualification for a cabinet member is they can get 50 + 1 Senators to vote for their nomination.
If I were a Democratic Senator I would ask Hegseth to state whether he agrees or disagrees with each pertinent sentence in the police report, and also ask whether he is willing to waive any right to confidentiality to investigation reports conducted by other agencies. In my experience people with large-egos/overconfident do poorly with the minutia.
That said, Trump was pretty ambivalent about Kavanaugh’s confirmation ordeal; I think Trump thought it was not his problem and Kavanaugh had to earn it.
I don’t believe that has been fully litigated. The logic of the 12th amendment suggests that it may be the case that anyone in the line of presidential succession must also be native-born. I would think that standing would be a problem in making a successful case on this.
The 12th amendment only says that the eligibility requirements for Vice President is the same as the President.
Article II leaves it to Congress to legislate whom shall succeed after the Vice President. The Presidential Succession Act specifically lays out a cabinet officer gets in the successor order if and only if they are eligible to be President.
You are being disingenuous. It’s not that hard to understand some of the basic qualifications to run the DoD. It’s a huge organization with a huge budget and many different missions. The person running it ought to have experience managing/leading a large organization. Familiarity with budgets and how to resolve budgetary conflicts between different arms of an organization. They ought to have some familiarity with recent spending and priorities in the military.
Its possible to select a mailroom clerk and put them in charge of a Fortune 500 company and have them succeed, the equivalent of choosing Hegseth, its just not very likely.
Steve
No, steve, you’re being ahistorical. If you go back 50 years and start looking at DoD secretaries you will find their backgrounds extremely varied and almost none have the sorts of backgrounds you claim are the “basic qualifications”. Some were lawyers. Some were career politicians without substantial management experience. For example, Elliott Richardson had limited management experience until he was appointed Secretary of HEW, a post he held for a year or so before being appointed Secretary of Defense. That’s hardly enough time to learn where the restroom is.
Shorter: there are no identifiable qualifications that characterize all of the Secretaries of Defense over the last 50 years other than being a U. S. citizen.
You don’t even need to go back that far. Lloyd Austin has the qualifications you seek. Do you think he is a good Secretary of Defense? I think the empirical evidence for that is lacking and there is plenty of evidence that he isn’t. Personal lapses on his part, weak readiness, branches not reaching their enlistment goals, concerning lapses in multiple branches (particularly the Navy).
You seem to think I’m defending Hegseth. I’m not. I don’t give a damn about him. I don’t believe there are actual qualifications for cabinet officers. Maybe there should be but there aren’t.
Elliot Richardson had served as a US Attorney General, Lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and AG of that state. Was he ideal for HEW? probably not, but he had held several management positions within government, ones requiring leadership skills and managing budgets. In none of those positions was he asked to leave because he had a drinking problem. But, we were talking about DoD. I went back through the last 20 SecDef and no one comes close to having so little prior experience.
Steve
Thank you for conceding my claim which was not that Hegseth is ideal for the job (he isn’t) but that the actual requirements for being a cabinet official are darned limited.
I’m all for establishing qualifications for cabinet officials by statute. If we do we shouldn’t be surprised that no one can meet them. Or that the legal requirements don’t result in better outcomes.