Since the election there has been an idea floating around that the Trump presidency might not be so bad if Trump picks reasonable and smart people to run his administration for him. Hope springs eternal and all that. He is a pragmatist, they say. A businessman. He will seek out talent and use it for his own benefit, and that will improve the quality of his administration. He has talked about ‘draining the swamp’ endlessly. For those of you who are not up to date on your English to Trump dictionary this is taken to mean smashing the nexus of power in Washington that links business and special interests to government via corrupt insider dealing and influence peddling through the medium of the much maligned lobbyist. A lot of people see this mode of doing business as a problem, including many who dislike trump. Some seem to think this offers some ray of hope, that his policies may not be totally antithetical to good governance. He might appoint Anti-Swamp people to the Government, and end up with good policy despite himself.  Unfortunately this is predicated on two assumptions that don’t really hold up.

The first is that Trump knows that he doesn’t know anything and must find people who do. The second is that he could recognize people who knew the answers when he saw them. So now that his cabinet nominations have been named and are working their way slowly through the process of confirmation, how did he do?

It is difficult to put into words the mediocrity of Donald Trump’s proposed cabinet.  Now most of the time Cabinet secretaries are pretty dull. If they were shapes they would be beige cuboids, non-threatening but seemingly solid and dependable. Known quantities.

The people His Orangeness has chosen are, however,  baroque and abstract shapes depicted in lurid and eye-watering color. These are the raging mediocrities, those souls not content merely to be foolish, ignorant and misled but feel the need to encourage it in others.

It is one thing to simply not be terribly clever. Most of us fall into this category. And while mediocrity is not a mortal sin it is a dubious foundation on which to build. So who are these people poised to wear the Secretarial crowns, now that the Ancien Regime has been cast out?  Who are these bold new Tribunes of the Plebs, ready to ‘drain the swamp’ and save the country from the dominion of cronies, kleptocrats and the dreaded Washington Insider?

Secretary of State- Rex Tillerson

Rex Tillerson is 64. He enjoys drilling for oil, selling oil, frustrating environmentalists and long walks around the dacha with his good friend Vlad. While he was head of Exxon Mobil Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship, one of the highest honors the Russian Federation can grant a foreign national. While he took a more moderate tack than his predecessor at the head of Exxon Mobil (I.e. he admitted global warming might be a thing), the company under his leadership was still one of the biggest sponsors behind the opposition to international climate treaties. Treaties he will now be in charge of negotiating as America’s chief diplomat. Needless to say little should be expected on that front, but equally concerning is his deep connection with Exxon’s expansion into Russia, currently on hold because of international sanctions.  If Tillerson should decide to lift those sanctions, Exxon could resume its contracts with the giant Russia state-owned gas company to exploit millions of square miles of arctic reserves.

Also worth noting is that Tillerson comes to us without any record in government or public policy, nor any considerable body of opinion on international affairs or foreign relations. In fact his confirmation hearing was a masterly performance of non-disclosure. From Iran to Israel, from gunboats in the South China Sea to warcrimes in Syria he seemed to have no recommendations, opinions or insights whatsoever. Under pressure he just about admitted that Cuba was indeed a place. This total failure to worship at the altar of traditional Republican neo-conservative foreign policy has alarmed many Republican senators, notably Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. The last time time Senators blocked the nominee of their own party for a Cabinet job was nearly a century ago, but with the numbers so tight and Democrats so vehemently against Trump’s chosen candidates even one or two defections could put the process in jeopardy. So it’s a bit difficult to know what to expect, although I will be very surprised if this is the last we hear of the Secretary for Exxon.

Secretary of Defense – General James Mattis 

I must confess Mattis is something of an exception on this list. He is a retired Marine Corps general, and as such has a wealth of experience in military affairs. Ok, so his callsign might be ‘Mad Dog’. That isn’t great for the look of the thing. But he was responsible alongside General Petraeus for the counter-insurgency manual used in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to which he has a history of strategic and military scholarship we can review.  So he is qualified, and will probably do an ok job. There is the slight wrinkle that he will need a waiver, as he was employed by the Federal Government (as a General) too recently and fall afoul of the anti-lobbying and corruption rules.

Homeland Security– General John F. Kelly

Another Marine Corps general. He was previously the head of Southern Command, which includes the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. To say he is viewed with suspicion by human and civil rights groups would miss an opportunity to use words like ‘dismay’, or ‘apoplectic rage’. Considering Trump’s record of calling for mass deportations, religious migration tests and border walls the fact that the new head of Homeland Security has in the past been responsible for press blackouts and prison crackdowns seems like relevant information. But as with General Mattis these military men can be hard to reed, and are in some senses blank slates. Much of their opinion is not known, or has simply never come up practically. Institutions often attempt to mould such men and imprint their institutional biases upon them. So what emerges can be somewhat difficult to predict, even without the added variable of the latest installment of ‘Stuff Trump Decides to Care About Today’.

Director of Central Intelligence – Mike Pompeo

Pompeo is a retired congressman from Kansas. He is known for calling for the execution of Edward Snowden, supporting bulk data collection by the NSA and other government organizations, opposing the closure of Guantanamo Bay and defending torture as heroic. He appears to believe in few if any safeguards for individuals against the collection of metadata, including what is euphemistically called ‘lifestyle data’. Not only is he fairly new, having only come in on the Tea Party wave of 2010, but he has no real experience of running an organization as large and complex as the CIA. And that is to leave entirely to one sid ethe fact he appears to yearn for some kind of national electronic panopticon.

Secretary of the Treasury – Steve Mnuchin

Mnuchin comes to us by way of Goldman Sachs. A hedge fund manager, he acquired the nickname ‘The Foreclosure King’ after buying a bank during the financial crisis which was then rescued by the Federal Government and making huge profits picking up distressed mortgages and evicting people. Mnuchin, like Tillerson, also has no previous government experience. So his record in the private sector is really what he must hang his hat on, so to speak. That is something of an issue, because Steve is not the sort of man rural industrial voters in the mid-west had in mind when they elected The Donald to ‘drain the swamp’. M of the more working-class Trump backers concerned over the Treasury being handed over to a man whose main engine of wealth creation was kicking people like them out into the street.  The fact his top priorities are huge cuts to personal income and corporate taxation are not helping with the impression. Another big swing and a miss as far as a bold new post-swamp reality goes.

Attorney General- Jeff Sessions 

When the Supreme Court struck down a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act a few years ago Sessions called it ‘a good day for the south’. That should tell you about all you need to know about this fellow. But on the off chance that fails to paint the metaphorical picture his past causes célèbres include suing voting rights activists, fighting to preserve the prison chain gang as an institution and  curtailing the activities of the NAACP. And that is only counting the last time he was an Attorney General in Alabama. As a senator he has fought against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, against allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military and against any kind of immigration reform. His response to climate change is that carbon dioxide is plant food and that therefore everything is going to be fine. This is the kind of intellect with which we are dealing. Now, while its not good to have racist, crazy, homophobic old men running any part of the U.S government the Justice Department is a particular problem. Because the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department is where the most of the actual work of enforcing federal civil rights, voting rights and other protections is done. And now it is under the control of a man who has shown his hostility to the achievements of the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s in every way possible. For decades. Its much like putting the fox in charge of the hen-coop.

Secretary of Labor – Andrew F Puzder

Puzder is a restaurant-chain executive. In particular the Carls Jr and Hardee’s brands. He is vehemently against raising the minimum wage, business regulation and being made to pay for his employees health insurance. As Secretary of Labor he will be responsible for enforcement of workplace regulations. More likely he will be responsible for the non-enforcement of workplace regulations, carrying out his professed belief that business should be free to do pretty well whatever it wants in terms of pay and conditions to say nothing of healthcare. If this sounds like some pretty swamp-adjacent activity to you, rest assured you are not alone.

 

Secretary for Health and human services – Tom Price

Tom Price is a six-term Republican congressman from Georgia. He was a doctor, and is one of the Republican lawmakers most vocal on the topic of healthcare and healthcare reform. Specifically he speaks often about how terrible the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) is. He has put forward several replacement plans. All of them are great, unless you are in thrall to some crazy notion that the healthcare system should heal the sick. If that is your kind of thing you may not like them so much. Price is also strictly and staunchly anti-abortion rights, helping to lead the charge to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood and virtually anyone else engaged in women’s reproductive healthcare and family planning. So not much to look forward to here.

 

Secretary of Energy – Rick Perry

Secretary Rick Perry. Don’t laugh, thats unkind. Sure, there was that one time at the debate where he couldn’t remember the names of the three Federal agencies he wanted to abolish. But in hindsight perhaps that was for the best, because one of them was the Department of Energy. He is not a believer in man-made climate change, so you can forget about any expansion of renewable power infrastructure or raising energy efficiency standards. More likely it will be open slather for the Oil companies in particular.

 

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development -Ben Carson

Housing and Urban Development is functionally the secretary for African American people. So it should be unsurprising that Trump has picked an African American man for the position. Unfortunately for us Carson seems not to believe in doing any of the things HUD usually does. Housing desegregation, urban planning and housing affordability are all businesses he seems to think the Federal Government should get out of. This is consistent with the rest of his far-right stances on Abortion rights, social security and healthcare. Once again he has no government experience and no clear stance on a variety of issues. More concerning to me, however, is that he seems to be half-asleep most of the time. He has taken being politically disengaged and turned it into a form of art, alternating between the slow articulation of inane pablum and the spreading of bizarre conspiracy theories. He has compared Abortion with slavery and seems to believe same sex marriage and pedophilia are somehow closely related. Whether one can be a neurosurgeon and an idiot simultaneously is justly debatable, but Carson gives every outward sign of an intellect at rest rather than at work.

Environmental Protection Agency- Scott Pruitt

Scott Pruitt has been selected to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. His previous involvement with that body has been repeatedly suing it to try and stop it from protecting the environment. To say he is a puppet of the fossil fuel industry is to do a great disservice to puppets. As Attorney General of Oklahoma he once received a letter from an oil company, put his letterhead on it and filed it with the EPA virtually without change. Naturally he thinks Climate Change is some kind of vast left-wing conspiracy and that environmental regulation is an intolerable burden on business. Since Trump has already nominated a Secretary of Labor who dosn’t believe in labor rights perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that he has also put forward an EPA director who dosn’t believe in protecting the environment. Exactly what he will do as director remains to be seen, but it probably won’t involve tighter regulations or saving the spotted owl.

Secretary of Commerce – Wilbur Ross

Ross is a billionaire famous for taking over failing steel and industrial companies and extracting profit from their closure, sale or reorganization. Again, another wealthy white man with no government experience. More concerning is his past business ties to Trump, having helped him stave off the closure of his Taj Majal casino in the 1990s. Like Trump he also believes that U.S. trade deals have been a bad idea, particularly NAFTA. There has not been a protectionist Secretary of Commerce for a very long time, so nobody quite knows what to expect.

Secretary of Transportation – Elaine Chao

Chao is both non-white and female. She also has previous government experience, having served as George W. Bush’s secretary of Labor. But in case you thought she was a real departure from the aforementioned nominees, she is in fact very rich. She is also married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  As far as ‘draining the swamp’ goes she also leaves something to be desired, having spent time on the boards of a number of huge companies and with close links to most of the people who compose the metaphorical Swamp. As Transportation Secretary she will be responsible for administering much of any infrastructure investment the Trump administration does. In that connection it should be concerning that she is against government direct investment, favoring tax breaks and public-private partnerships to encourage spending. Hardly what the lefties clutching at straws to find something to like in Trump’s program would desire.

 

Secretary of the Interior – Roy Zinke 

One of the main jobs of a Secretary of the Interior is administering the national parks. So picking someone from Montana like Zinke makes some kind of sense as Montana and the plains states are largely composed of national park. And from all I can find he does seem to have a genuine concern for the preservation of the national estate and the protection of the natural wonders that he will be in charge of. But he is also a pro-business pragmatist, which is another way of saying he is OK with drilling for oil in said natural wonders if the price is right. On the whole he is probably one of the more reasonable Trump picks, but that is a rather low bar.

 

Secretary of Education- Betsy deVos 

DeVos has been selected to run the Department of Education, despite never having attended a public school or university, sent her children to a public school or university or running a public school or university. Her experience in the field of education is pretty much limited to slashing public school budgets and reassigning the cash to ‘vouchers’, redeemable at private charter schools by parents to give them more ‘choice’ in education. Programs like this are usually code for cuts to education spending. Rather than ensuring everyone has access to education, this scheme puts the onus on the parents to pick a good school and relegates the Federal Government to simply writing checks. From that position its then easy to move to parents paying a larger and larger part of the cost of education themselves until there is, in effect, no public school system. From her confirmation hearings so far she also seems not to actually know anything about education, the metrics by which success and failure can be established, the current funding models or really anything else. So it seems pretty likely she will be a terrible Secretary. On the Swamp front she is no better. Her brother is one of the founders of Blackwater, the infamous private security firm, and the fortune she inherited from her father secured her position in the Michigan state Republican party for her fundraising prowess. Not exactly the type to storm the bastions of the corrupt establishment.

Small Business Administration – Linda McMahon

McMahon along with her husband founded the WWE, turning pro-wrestling in the U.S. from a carnival sideshow into a huge money-making machine. She used this money to buy a Yacht named Sexy Bitch. That fact isn’t politically significant, just amusing. She also used that cash to run for the Senate a couple of times, losing both, and then to help bankroll The Donald’s campaign. I’m not sure if you can call WWE a ‘small business’, but I suppose it counts as experience. But appointing major campaign donors to your administration is pretty swampy behavior.

 

That is the list so far. Wrestling executives, oil-industry shills, oil-industry bosses, labor exploiters, billionaires daughters, theocrats, environmental vandals and at least one racist bigot. As a group they have a greater net worth than the 43 million poorest American households.

It may be that the most concerning part of the Trump Administration will be the Administration, rather than the Trump. Far from pragmatists who will restrain Trump’s bombastic and reactionary impulses, he has picked exactly the sort of cabinet that will draw him further and further down the rabbit hole of his own paranoid reactionary neurosis. And to all those who say that these people are the grown-ups we have been looking for I would pose a question: Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?