We’ve spent much of the last few weeks distracted.
President-elect Donald Trump’s sometimes oddball – even unhinged – selections for various posts in his new Cabinet have kept every pol and pundit slavering like rabid weasels. The ink was barely dry on Matt Gaetz’s contract with “Cameo” when another discharge of bile over the nominee for HHS broke the oily surface of DC’s shallow waters.
Front pages were suffused with ink over RFK’s nomination as HHS secretary (probably rightly) and an unnecessary amount of vitriol was aimed at the probable secretary of education over a trivial accounting error in her undergraduate degree status, apparently dating back decades (a battle almost certainly pointless).
Almost all focus has been on the domestic front, perhaps understandably, since Trump’s razor-thin win was largely due to domestic concerns over the home economy. We’ve largely ignored our “external exposure” positions: The Department of State and the Department of Defense. These agencies’ major tasks lie outside our borders.
While we’ve been confronting some horrible choices on the interior front, that exterior world is on fire.
But there’s hope:
Marco Rubio’s political history is a long one. Like Gaetz, Rubio is Floridian, but there the parallel stops. A Cuban American, Rubio has served a lifetime in politics – starting as a city commissioner in Miami, then serving as a legislator for the next 24 years, first in the Florida House (where he was not always on side with all of his GOP colleagues) and then in the U.S. Senate, since 2010. He ran in the GOP primary for president in 2016, and though he often had harsh words for Trump during the campaign, he dropped out and endorsed Trump and has been a fairly reliable “party man” and ally to him since.
I personally like an administrator that’s got some serious experience, and while that’s not been common with the Trump crew thus far, Rubio has a solid background — during Trump’s last term as adviser on Latin America, and since serving as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (a non-trivial spot, since it affords him a good look behind the curtain in international issues). His interest and expertise in China, likely to become a Trump 2.0 focus, has also grown. We should support the new administration’s choice on this one.
But another Floridian, Gov. Ron DeSantis — also (I will argue) both competent and confirmable — has now materialized as a possible nominee in place of the hapless Pete Hegseth in the Department of Defense.
R. Bruce Anderson
I do not think there’s much chance that anyone has missed the fact that I’ve often been crabby in these very pages of DeSantis as governor of Florida. But this is quite different.
DeSantis has tremendous experience running a sometimes-chaotic executive. Florida is weird. We independently elect some of the cabinet, allow some positions to be filled by nomination, and many jurisdictions are shared or fought over. Whatever your policy goals, marshalling these sometimes unconnected (or connected in unexpected ways) administrative agencies is the big challenge.
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True, DeSantis largely controlled these agencies through political positioning, but he also spent that political capital carefully and cautiously, showing a skill in administrative finesse with real effect. His successes here speak to exactly the qualities needed in the department that runs one of the largest and arguably most important government agencies.
DeSantis has not always been “on side” with Trump, and discussion of his possible appointment is a bit of a gamble, but a good one. As with all administrative posts, from the cabinet on down, their ability to take orders and see them through is matched by giving orders that will be carried out, judging their “reach” and defining the leadership of the organization.
The Department of Defense begs for radical, reasonable reorganization. And the comparison between a Hegseth and a DeSantis in that role is an easy choice.
And it’s not Hegseth.
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay, Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio are good choices for Trump | Anderson
