The following editorial first appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
President Donald Trump’s administration at some point will have to start conveying a sense that it knows which direction the country is headed. So far, his nominees requiring Senate confirmation aren’t helping that cause.
In hearings on Capitol Hill, multiple nominees conveyed little or no understanding of the issues facing the departments they would direct. It often appeared as if they had done minimal, if any, preparatory reading. Nor did it appear that Trump’s transition team had made a serious attempt to rehearse the nominees ahead of the grilling they received before hostile Senate Democrats and openly skeptical Republicans.
Equally troubling is the attempt by Trump and his Senate supporters to rush confirmations through even though several nominees have yet to be properly vetted as required by the independent Office of Government Ethics. The list of nominees includes several billionaires whose combined net worth is reported at $11 billion. Serious ethical questions loom unanswered.
Retired generals James Mattis and John F. Kelly deservedly sailed through their hearings and won confirmation by the Senate late Friday to head, respectively, the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security. Monday’s confirmation of Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., as CIA director encountered minimal obstacles. Former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson also seems slated for a speedy confirmation as secretary of state.
Other nominees won’t have it so easy. Some deserve rejection (an unlikely prospect) for their backgrounds as well as their abysmal performances on Capitol Hill. Foremost are Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general tapped to head the Environmental Protection Agency; Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos, the education secretary nominee; and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Pruitt seeks to head an agency he has repeatedly denigrated and sued. His campaign coffers are brimming with donations from the very petroleum companies he would regulate.
In her hearings, DeVos was nothing short of disastrous. She displayed minimal knowledge of fundamental education issues. She never attended public schools as a child and never sent her own children to them. DeVos was evasive when asked whether guns belong in schools. At times under questioning, she seemed vague on what accountability standards and testing proficiency actually mean.
Price is an ethical nightmare — epitomizing the swamp that Trump said he would drain. He appears to have traded stocks in health care firms that benefited from legislation he was pushing. He has offered a weak defense of those stock trades and attempted to shrug them off as the work of brokers who didn’t realize the conflict of interest issues involved. Come on.
Winging it is no way to run the most powerful nation on earth. If these are the best advisers Trump can find, the nation is in for a rough ride.
