Some people think Trump is either a buffoon or a shoot-from-the-hip kind of “decider”.
From watching things recently (including the Taiwan kerfuffle that turned out to be planned way in advance) I don’t think so.
The Gen. Mattis nomination, in particular, seems to be a pretty devious plan. We all know that Democrats want very much to stymie Trump’s cabinet nominations. We also know that due to Reid’s “nuclear option”, they really don’t have much chance of doing that. But Trump (I theorize) knows he needs to give some outlet to Democrats’ energy and some way for them to “save face”.
So he nominates Mattis for Sec. of Defense. Mattis can be blocked by filibuster, if 40 or more Senators decide to use it in the vote for the 7-year-after-retiring-from-service waiver.
The result: Democrats filibuster Mattis, notching a “win” for themselves, blowing off steam and “saving face”. Trump gets to play the victim of Democratic intransigence and appoints someone that Democrats probably would object to just as much if not more, but can’t do much about.
And as an added bonus, Mattis is AFAIU a very well respected general in military circles, so blocking his nomination is another nail in the “Democrats are anti-military” coffin.
Seriously, I cannot believe that Donald Trump is aware of the minutiae of Senate confirmation rules for cabinet officials. I would not be surprised if two months ago, he couldn’t have told you how many cabinet officials there were.
Political battlefields for the last year or so are littered with bodies of those, both politicians and pundits, who underestimated Trump. It is amazing that after this string of successes he still manages to convince so many he’s inept. But it works really well for him.
Why would Democrats want to block Mattis? As you point out yourself, it is not a winning political strategy to block nominees your party would otherwise regard as non-controversial just because there exists a technicality that means you can, and the Democrats have a great deal invested at the moment in painting themselves as the party that upholds norms, moderation, and reasonable compromise. (Regardless of whether you think they actually ARE that party, that is the public image they are going for.) Nor, as far as I can tell, does Mattis hold views that are personally abhorrent to the majority of Democrats. The sensible strategy is to confirm Mattis, Chao, and any other mainstream, qualified nominees that Trump manages to produce without a fuss, and make a big show of this fact in order to make it clear that opposition to his other nominees has to do with the individual candidate’s views and qualifications, rather than generalized opposition to anyone nominated by Trump.
"Some appointees, like Elaine Chao’s nomination to lead the Transportation Department, are unlikely to be delayed. But Democrats will force retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to get 60 votes for a legislative waiver to become secretary of defense, and they’re singling out at least four other nominations for strict scrutiny. "
Maybe Politico is misreporting this, but I don’t think so. The other four they cannot ultimately block. Mattis they can.
A tough as nails Marine General in the Pentagon is a nice change from the usual pants-wetting civilian liberals who usually get nominated to these positions. The Iranian will be paying close attention.
My first thought when I heard NPR refer to his nickname, Mad Dog Mattis was “Hey, shouldn’t that be James Mad Dog Mountain Dew Herbert Comacho Mattis?”
Pants-wetting liberals like Obama’s first SecDef (and Bush’s final one) Robert Gates, who was also former CIA director and received praise from both Republicans and Democrats?
Or his successor, also a former CIA director, Leon Panetta, who also served as Bill Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff? Panetta was CIA director during the Osama Bin Ladin raid and became SecDef shortly afterwards.
Or was it pants-wetting liberal Chuck Hagel, former Republican senator from Nebraska, who earned two purple hearts as an NCO in Vietnam?
Or Ash Carter, current SecDef, who has held numerous positions within the Pentagon dating back to Bill Clinton’s first term, who has a graduate degree in physics from Oxford University, supported the 2003 Iraq war, and has advocated a preventative strike against North Korea if they are even going to test a missile that could potentially hit the continental U.S.?
All of them, with the exception of Ash Carter, served in the military. You should really expand your source of reference beyond Breitbart or Fox Nation.
From what I know, I would like to see the Democrats reserve their firepower for other nominations. Mattis seems like someone pretty reasonable, who would hopefully be somewhat of a check on Trump and Flynn, who may even be crazier than Trump. The latter guy peddles conspiracy theories about Clinton (among other things) and has a son (who has worked closely with him) who even peddles the nuttyPizzaGate conspiracy theory that led to the domestic terrorism incident yesterday at that restaurant (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/-michael-flynn-trump-fake-news-clinton.html)
So, now we have a national security advisor whose son is inciting domestic terrorism. Wonderful!
Mattis has, at least for now, talked Trump out of using torture…and, although he is fairly hard-line on Iran, he apparently does not favor getting out of the treaty with them. With the ultra-low bar Trump is setting, “not bat-shit crazy” seems like a pretty good selling point for a nominee.
That would be reasonable, except, as I pointed out, due to Reid, Democrats only have the firepower for Mattis. They can either block him or block no one at all.
Okrahoma, I think you’re right. I wouldn’t have thought Trump capable of brilliant political strategy, but whether on accident or on purpose, he has left Senate Dems in an awkward position, where the only nominee they can effectively oppose is probably the one nominee they shouldn’t oppose.
He would be a good buffer for any truly asinine or illegal orders Trump might try to give to the military and he seems like he would have little compunction against resigning in protest if he felt it necessary.
I suspect it’s because they are the “big government” party. For the GOP, shutting down the federal government is like a rite of passage or something. For the Dems, it’s heresy.
See, that’s my point. There are too many of these incidences. Trump could be Pierre Richard from “Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire” - a bumbling buffoon who repeatedly (and accidentally) thwarts the spy grandmasters. Or, more likely, he is actually capable of advanced political strategy, and pretends to be inept in order to fool the opposition.
It’s actually quite fair, you just have to do it right. Democrats did obstruct Bush’s SS privatization plan and it went quite well for them and badly for Bush. Democrats have an advantage when Republicans try to change popular programs. Republicans have an advantage when Democrats want to spend more money. So naturally, Republicans will have the advantage more often than Democrats when it comes to obstruction, but that’s not unfair, it just means parties shouldn’t try dumb shit.
Politicians and pundits overestimated the voters in the last year. But now it’s time for the reality check.
Trump’s a phenomenal salesman. I’ll give him credit for that. But a lot of the projects he’s sold have been failures. When it comes to salesmanship, he’s A+. When it comes to backing his promises up, he’s around a C or D.
So in the last year, Trump has been selling the idea that he would be a great President. And because he’s a great salesman, a lot of people believed him. And a lot of people looked past the sales pitch at his actual record and said no to him. But that’s water under the bridge; he won the election.
And now that the elections over, he’s no longer selling. Now he has to deliver what he sold. This is where it often falls apart for Donald Trump. Only this time, instead of a real estate project at stake, it’s the entire country.
So don’t count Trump as a success because he got elected. Wait four years and then we can decide if he was a success. For now, all I’m doing is wishing him the best of luck and hoping he succeeds.
I think you’re wrong. A lot of what a politician in office does is selling. It is not enough to do. You have to do and sell.
If he does not sell well enough, it’s as if he has done nothing.
And if he under-does but sells it phenomenally, he’ll be considered successful.
And I am not even talking about selling it to the legislators in the first place, which often means selling it to the populace so that they can push the legislators.
Democrats aren’t going to block Mattis. They might hold a hearing, and ask him questions, and force a vote, but he’ll become the SecDef. Blocking him has no upside and lots of downside.
Mattis seems like a decent and not insane guy, but I worry about him advocating for getting us into another stupid war. At least he recognizes that killing the Iran deal would be a massive gift to Iran.