Recruiting Lawmakers for the Cabinet

  Philip Wallach and Jaehun Lee at AEI:

When he was first elected president in November 2016, Donald Trump chose a diverse array of businessmen, generals, and Republican stalwarts to fill his cabinet. With a few of his picks, including Mick Mulvaney as director of the Office of Management and Budget and Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Trump also built bridges to congressional Republicans—a shrewd move for a political outsider.

But now that he has been reelected in 2024, Trump’s picks for his second term cabinet have drawn even more heavily from veterans of Congress. Indeed, by our calculations, Trump 47 is leaning harder on Capitol Hill than any other post-WWII administration.

The headline figure (38 percent, or eight out of 21 cabinet-level picks) excludes five other former members Trump has tapped for important administration jobs, especially in the intelligence world. (The note below describes our full calculations.)

What has motivated Trump—who is hardly a deep admirer of America’s legislature?

Perhaps Trump wants to enlist legislators for their ability to navigate the complexities of the legislative process. A few picks plausibly fit this model, including Senator Marco Rubio, Rep. Elise Stefanik (the current number four in House Republican leadership), and former Rep. Doug Collins. In this way of thinking, presidents (like Trump) without their own record of legislative service will rely more heavily on former members, which the historical record supports.

Most of Trump’s choices point in another direction, though. Far from being known as effective legislative operators, several of his nominees were known as fiery critics of their colleagues. Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard stand out as having more enemies than friends in Congress.

These nominees better fit a different model for understanding nominees with congressional background: coalition maintenance. From this point of view, fitting into the party in a particular way matters as much as long legislative experience, and indeed Trump’s picks are below the average number of years of service.

Protests Fizzle Out

A number of posts have discussed the politics of protest.  The anti-Israel protests flopped with the general public in part because they were an elite activity.

Johanna Alonso at Inside Higher Ed:

After an unprecedented spring of pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the United States, the fall semester has been comparatively quiet. The total number of protest actions declined by more than 64 percent, from 3,220 to 1,151, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a project by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of Connecticut that collects data on protests.

The number of students arrested for protesting dropped even more precipitously. Last spring, 3,572 students were arrested in connection with their involvement in protests as pro-Palestinian encampments proliferated on campus quads, starting with the one launched at Columbia University on April 17. But in the fall, only 88 student protesters were arrested. (For the purposes of this article, numbers for the spring were calculated using data from Jan. 1 to July 1 and from July 1 to Dec. 17 for the fall.)

The decline can certainly be attributed in part to a natural loss of momentum following the fever pitch the movement reached in the spring. But some free speech advocates believe that the restrictive expressive-activity policies some institutions introduced over the summer and early fall may have discouraged students from protesting.

Supporting Murder

Emerson College poll:

A majority of voters (68%) think the actions of the killer of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, are unacceptable. Seventeen percent find the actions acceptable, while 16% are unsure.

“While 68% of voters overall reject the killer’s actions, younger voters and Democrats are more split — 41% of voters aged 18-29 find the killer’s actions acceptable (24% somewhat acceptable and 17% completely acceptable), while 40% find them unacceptable; 22% of Democrats find them acceptable, while 59% find them unacceptable, this compares to 12% of Republicans and 16% of independents who find the actions acceptable, underscoring shifting societal attitudes among the youngest electorate and within party lines,” [Emerson poll director Spencer] Kimball said.

Men were slightly more inclined to find the actions acceptable compared to women: 19% said the actions were acceptable compared to 14% of women.

The Drone Hysteria of 2024

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation. The drone panic of 2024 is a great example.

 

Planes. Very good video https://t.co/dAxHc5XPpC

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 16, 2024

Listen here: I have been lazed before, and so have almost all other pilots who have flown for a while. This is dangerous and can damage a pilots eyes. You will (and deserve) to go to jail.

This is getting out of hand. Stop pic.twitter.com/gnNZ3ndbdr

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 17, 2024

Bingo.

And the videos I’ve seen are ALL PLANES https://t.co/hONqcQhGaQ

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 17, 2024

It’s literally Venus https://t.co/N9xSAZVkwz

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 16, 2024

GOOD GOD https://t.co/gX7PDhebnP

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 17, 2024

Hard Power

Previous posts discussed the question of isolationism in contemporary politics.

"Hard power" -- military strength rooted in economic strength -- is the basis for "soft power" -- noncoercive persuasion. As David Mamet wrote in The Untouchables: "You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word."

Mitch McConnell at Foreign Affairs:

In January 1934, William Borah, a Republican senator from Idaho and an outspoken isolationist, addressed a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Because peace had prevailed for 15 years following the end of World War I, Borah argued, global military spending was excessive. Tensions between European powers, he insisted, could not be solved by outsiders: “It will be a long time, I venture to believe, before there will be any necessity or any justification for the United States engaging in a foreign war.”

Of course, by the end of the 1930s, the Nazi conquest of Europe had driven a dramatic swing in U.S. public opinion away from Borah’s isolationist daydream. By May 1940, as German forces invaded France, 94 percent of Americans supported any and all necessary investments in national defense. By June, more than 70 percent favored the draft.

The United States saw the light during World War II. But must it take another conquest of a close ally before the country turns its belated attention to the requirements of national defense? Isolation is no better a strategy today than it was on the eve of World War II. Today, in fact, in the face of linked threats even more potent than the Axis powers, a failure to uphold U.S. primacy would be even more catastrophically absurd than was the refusal to assume that responsibility 85 years ago. The last time around, the naive abdication of the requirements of national defense made reviving the arsenal of democracy on a short timeline unnecessarily difficult. As Admiral Harold Stark, then the chief of naval operations, observed in 1940, “Dollars cannot buy yesterday.”

The United States urgently needs to reach a bipartisan consensus on the centrality of hard power to U.S. foreign policy. This fact must override both left-wing faith in hollow internationalism and right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline. The time to restore American hard power is now

Spending Is Easier Than Cutting

Americans vastly overestimate the amount of waste in the budget, and underestimate the difficulty of spending cuts.

 Bruce Mehlman:

Growing Government is Easy, Shrinking It is Hard. DOGE faces formidable political, procedural & even Constitutional hurdles. Congress has exclusive power to tax & spend. The Impoundment Act forbids Presidents from refusing to spend appropriated funds. The Administrative Procedures Act lays out mandatory, time-consuming steps to regulate or deregulate. The Federal Advisory Commission Act limits outside advisory entities, requiring open meetings, formal chartering, balanced membership, public involvement, and reporting. And Congress usually opposes slimming the government workforce since it impacts so many districts — “only 15% of the 2.19 million civilian full-time federal employees in the United States work in the Washington metro area.”

Suspend the Constitution and Laws? Republicans say Meh!

A number of posts have discussed support for authoritarianism and political violence in the United States.

One poll suggested Americans support checks and balances, but for the other party.

A more recent poll confirms that support for authoritarianism is strong among certain segments of the public.

Monmouth Polling Institute:

Most Democrats and independents would be upset if President-elect Donald Trump suspended laws and constitutional provisions to go after his political enemies. However, few Republicans say this would bother them a lot, although most see his statements about doing this as overstated. The Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll finds that most Americans feel the country has become more divided during President Joe Biden’s term, but only Republicans think it will become more united after Trump takes office again. In other results, more Americans believe the 2024 presidential results were fair than said the same about the 2020 outcome, mainly due to the steadfast refusal of most Republicans to acknowledge the validity of Biden’s win.

Trump suggested during the presidential campaign that he could suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies in his second term. The public is divided on whether this is something he will seriously do (48%) or if it is more of an exaggeration (47%). Most Democrats take these statements seriously (77%) while most Republicans tend to see them as an exaggeration (71%). Republicans are somewhat less likely to takes these statements seriously now (21%) then they were six months ago (33% in June).

If Trump did suspend some laws and constitutional provisions, 52% of the public would be bothered a lot by this. This number is down from 65% who felt this way in June. Those who say they would be bothered a lot by this ranges from 77% of Democrats (down from 86% in June) to 55% of independents (down from 68%) and just 23% of Republicans (down from 41%).