John Kelly's Problems Go Well Beyond Porter Mess

It appears that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly could be in his final days on the job as his mishandling of the Rob Porter situation blooms into a full-out scandal. He's getting hit from all sides, much of it from those opposed to President Donald Trump, but plenty from those inside the White House, at least according to all the anonymous quotes out there.

Sure, Kelly has alienated a lot of people with his comments about supposedly lazy Dreamers, his attacks on a military widow and his defense of Robert E. Lee. But at the end of the day he is responsible for a process job -- hiring, firing, coordinating, managing up and managing down. So it makes sense to measure him on how he's handling those responsibilities. I suggested five process criteria to grade Kelly by when he took the job at the end of July, and gave him an interim report early on. Now, with the possibility that he's about to leave, it's time for an update.

Cleaning House: In September, I thought he deserved a B+ or A-, and a month ago I would have still said he had done well on this aside from nepotism hire Jared Kushner's continued service. That was before Rob Porter (and David Sorenson) were exposed; it was also before stories of numerous White House staffers who had problems with security clearances. These stories aren't unrelated, since it appears that Kushner's security clearance problems may have been linked to the others. It's real progress that a lot of the early White House clown show has ended, but the best Kelly can get on this one is a soft B-, and that might be generous only because firing Kushner is probably an option he didn't have.