A Different Kind of Presidential Cabinet

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Donald Trump was elected to shake things up, to undo the damage that the left has been doing to our society, our culture, and our government. But when you staff a government with entertaining names, how does that affect the cause of effectively changing policy in a more positive, liberty-oriented direction?

Cabinet members tend to be obscure. Quick—who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services? Who is the Secretary of Defense? People may know the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, from the Republicans’ attempts to impeach him, or the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, from his use of the legal system against President-elect Trump and others in the Biden regime’s crosshairs. But most Cabinet members are pretty anonymous.

Not the Trump Cabinet. It features a number of prominent and semi-prominent political names, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem. The nominee for Defense Secretary, holder of two Bronze Stars and an author, is known from his gig on Fox and Friends. The nominee for Attorney General is known for his televised (and ultimately successful) effort to depose former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. (Ironically, McCarthy is also rumored to be up for a Cabinet position.) 

Donald Trump seems to have created a new kind of reality show. This looks like a cross between Cabinet Apprentice and Survivor: Cabinet Edition. Observers are left wondering which person will be the first to have President Trump say ‘You’re fired.” 

Americans love to be entertained, and nobody in politics right now does it better than The Once and Future President. By surrounding himself with personalities such as Kennedy, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz (if he gets confirmed, which is no sure thing), Gabbard, Noem, and others, Trump has made Cabinet members recognizable and kept people who follow politics fascinated. However, many of his picks, such as Kennedy and Gabbard, are not conservatives. Do they share the intention of limiting and reducing an overweaning Federal Leviathan?

Some have suggested that Gaetz may be a decoy, getting him out of Congress to “get Borked” and lose confirmation, then bring in the real nominee when the Senate has confirmation fatigue. If so, I hope that nominee is a strong, solid person and not just a “name.” 

The fireworks if and when Gaetz and McCarthy are in the same Cabinet meeting should be more entertaining than many movies, television programs, or sports. If you like politics as entertainment, you should enjoy it when those two meet again.

These are not the usual selections, but Trump is not the usual president. The left wing and right wing have been part of the same bird. The Trump administration seems to be a whole different bird.

Trump was elected to shake things up, to undo the damage that the left has been doing to our society, our culture, and our government, to restore a more traditional sense of federalism, subsidiarity, and cultural values that have been under attack by the left since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.

The appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) shows that this is not the same old Republican presidency, aiming to trim the Democrats’ sails a little bit. Never mind trying to make the government more efficient by creating a new department to do it, then appointing two people to head it. (And wouldn’t Vivek have been more useful replacing Vance in the Senate?) 

The new entity is tasked with taking a sledgehammer to the Leviathan state and trying to bring it down to size—something conservatives (and libertarians) should greet with approval. As Dennis Prager has said, “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

Will the marquee names be able to focus on this task, or will style overwhelm substance? We shall see.

President Trump’s pledge to eliminate the Department of Education should, of course, be welcomed. But do Donald, Elon, and Vivek really know what needs to be cut, and can they actually eliminate departments? 

As M. Stanton Evans observed, when our people get in positions of power, they cease to be our people. I suspect that there will be much resistance on Capitol Hill from both Democrats and Republicans, not to mention in the bureaucracy. Leviathan does not die easily. 

As the late Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus used to point out, when the Democrats are in charge, it’s as if the country is a car going off a cliff at a hundred miles per hour. At least the Republicans drive the speed limit, but you’re still going off the cliff. We need to turn the car around. This is what the Trump administration was elected to do. Can they do it?

It is one of the iron laws of politics that personnel is policy. It will be a happy four years if the new Trump Administration can actually make the state less intrusive, less expensive, and more efficient at doing the things it is supposed to do. But can they? Again, there will be significant resistance on Capitol Hill and in blue states, and I do not find Senator John Thune or Speaker Mike Johnson especially eager or effective leaders for this task.

When you staff a government with entertaining names, how does that affect the cause of effectively changing policy in a more positive, liberty-oriented direction? Restoring our culture of ordered liberty and traditional values will benefit all, but will the entertainment and the jockeying for television time and position drown out the necessary effort to promote freedom and order? 

It should be an interesting four years. One hopes it will also be productive. 

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The featured image, uploaded by Gage Skidmore, is a photograph of Pete Hegseth speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.