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Politics & Policy

Trump's Choice to Lead U.S. Intelligence is Not Qualified

As the president intensifies his feud with the spy agencies, Senate Republicans should step in.

Trump's Choice to Lead U.S. Intelligence is Not Qualified

As the president intensifies his feud with the spy agencies, Senate Republicans should step in.

Another one bites the dust.

Another one bites the dust.

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty

Another one bites the dust.

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty

One of the few qualified, well-respected and scandal-free members of President Donald Trump’s administration is on his way out. Dan Coats plans to resign next month as director of national intelligence, apparently to be replaced by a House member who has few obvious qualifications for the job – unless we count strong partisanship and loyalty to Trump. 

Trump has been feuding on and off with U.S. intelligence agencies since his presidency began, and we’re told that Representative John Ratcliffe, his proposed replacement for Coats, is going to “clean house,” which presumably means rooting out those more interested in getting the intelligence right than in demonstrating fealty to the president. 

Perhaps the Senate will insist on someone with more experience in these matters than Ratcliffe. But it’s a good reminder that Republican senators have flubbed this process from the get-go. They could’ve used their power of confirmation to insist that Trump run a professional White House and executive branch. They’ve largely chosen otherwise.

To be sure, Trump has had an unusually high number of failed nominations. Republican senators have been willing to block some of his poor choices; that’s why Herman Cain and Stephen Moore aren’t on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and why Judy Shelton, who still hasn’t been formally nominated, may not wind up there either. The Senate is able to block choices when it collectively chooses to, usually by convincing the president to withdraw a nominee before a hearing is held or even before he makes the nomination. But if anything, the process of finding, selecting, and vetting executive-branch nominees seems to be getting worse, considering that it took about seven months and two selections to find a secretary of defense and there’s still no nominee for secretary of homeland security more than three months after the position was vacated. 

The underlying problem is that Senate Republicans just haven’t given the president a forceful nudge. The need has been obvious since Trump welcomed Steve Bannon to the White House in a senior position and picked Reince Priebus, who had no governing experience, as chief of staff. Senate Republicans should’ve staged an intervention immediately and threatened to leave other executive-branch picks in limbo until Trump hired someone to run the White House who had a chance to be effective. If not then, they should’ve stepped in when he started the predictable string of failed nominees. Insisting that he run the administration professionally would’ve spared them a lot of trouble in the long run. 

It’s true that Trump came in as an outsider, and he had earned some latitude for the individuals he wanted to choose. Yet most of his problems haven’t really come from outsiders. Some of his least successful picks have been Republican members of the House. 

At any rate, Republican senators – many of whom were willing to publicly take on Trump when he attacked the intelligence community – should make sure that the new nominee isn’t intent on dismantling things that are actually working. 

1. Rick Hasen on the future of campaign-finance regulations

2. Seth Masket on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and impeachment

3. Yon Soo Park and Benjamin Valentino at the Monkey Cage on support for animal rights

4. Kate Brannen at Just Security takes a close read of what really was said during the Robert Mueller hearings

5. Adam Serwer on the media coverage of Mueller’s testimony

6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox on presidents and economic growth

7. And Noah Berlatsky argues for House hearings on accusations that Trump has been guilty of sexual assault

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    This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

    To contact the author of this story:
    Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

    To contact the editor responsible for this story:
    Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net