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The High Price Of Kakistocracy
As we inch toward the holidays and the news slows, I wanted to step back and offer a bit more context on the slew of absurdist Trump nominations. The sheer number of unqualified miscreants that Trump has chosen to cast for his second season is overwhelming to the mind and to the mechanisms in place to screen out the worst and dimmest.
“The volume of controversial nominees will force senators to prioritize their battles, allowing some to advance simply due to limited time and attention,” law professor Alan Z. Rozenshtein writes at Lawfare.
I highly recommend Rozenshtein’s piece. It places Trump’s approach to nominations in a broader historical and political context. Here’s a sampling:
Trump’s nominations represent an unprecedented triple assault on constitutional appointment norms: First, many are unqualified or hostile to their agencies’ missions. Second, rather than making a few controversial picks, Trump has flooded the zone, nominating an entire slate of problematic candidates that burdens the Senate’s capacity for proper vetting. And third, Trump has signaled willingness to circumvent the confirmation process through legally dubious tactics such as forced Senate adjournment. Together, these moves threaten to transform the appointments process from a constitutional safeguard into a vehicle for installing loyalists regardless of competence.
As Rozenshtein points out, the constitutional structure was intended to give considerable latitude to the president on appointments with the idea that he would be directly politically accountable to the electorate if he stocked his administration with grifters and clowns. Perhaps Trump’s 2020 defeat validates that structural approach, but his re-election has put the whole edifice under considerable strain.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-casts-the-worst-and-dimmest-for-season-2
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