All victorious politicians get a honeymoon with the public and the press that can linger for months, perhaps even for 100 days into the term.
Except Donald Trump.
His lasted about a week and if you blinked, you missed the shortest love fest in political history.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Fresh off his landslide win, the president-elect had the spotlight to himself.
Democrats were mostly stunned into silence and his chummy fireside chat with Joe Biden put an exclamation point on his return from the political boneyard.
A smiling Biden’s greeting of “Welcome back” to the White House knee-capped the deniers and the resistance.
Take that, Kamala!
All the feel-good vibes must have been driving Trump mad.
He needed to break up the party by creating some trouble.
And so he did. His nominations of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services slammed the brakes on the honeymoon.
Perhaps Thanksgiving came early to Mar-a-Lago and a restless Trump felt the need to act presidential and pick out two turkeys to pardon.
Then again, calling Gaetz and Kennedy turkeys is an insult to the real thing.
Not quality cabinetry
It’s not a close call to say both men are unfit for Cabinet jobs.
There is absolutely nothing in their backgrounds that supports giving them such vast power and responsibility.
In fact, their records make overwhelming cases against them.
Gaetz is a quicksilver provocateur with a unique reputation in Congress for being untrustworthy, which is quite something to behold given the competition.
With his sudden resignation from Congress, he aims to head off the release of an ethics report about various allegations, including that he had sex with an underage woman at a party.
Given the stakes, chances the report remains secret are next to zero.
Yet now Trump, in picking him to be the attorney general, says Gaetz is qualified to be the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump writes that “Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System.”
He’s absolutely right, and nobody knows the impact of that weaponizing more than he does.
But that’s exactly why he must put the reform mission in the hands of someone whose legal experience is long and relevant and whose character is beyond reproach.
Gaetz meets neither of those requirements, and so any hope of sweeping change is doomed from the start.
That’s a gift to the Merrick Garland types who have corrupted Justice by playing politics and meddling in elections.
Kennedy isn’t so much venal as he is a walking-talking conspiracy theorist about pretty much everything — including food, medicine, water and the air.
The fact that he occasionally makes a good point is a very low bar for a Cabinet position.
At best, he’s a gadfly more likely to do harm than make lasting reforms.
Merely to give him the title of secretary would damage the agency’s credibility and allow its failures to compound.
If those were the only problems with Gaetz and Kennedy, they would be reason enough for Trump to reward both men’s campaign support with jobs lower on the pecking order.
But an even greater consideration is the collateral damage they already are inflicting on the entire administration.
In nominating them, Trump has undercut his own agenda and his other, far more qualified choices.
Easy ‘gotcha’ for libs
In addition, he has given the left a wake-up call, with Dems and their media stenographers seizing a renewed line of attack against him.
They already are riding to the battle full of “Gotcha” attitudes about how the choices reflect Trump’s poor character and sinister motives, blah blah blah.
They can’t make Russia, Russia, Russia claims again, but are delighted to declare that his Cabinet choices prove voters made a mistake.
And it’s not just the left that’s alarmed.
Many Republicans, not all of them RINOs, say there is little chance Gaetz and Kennedy can be confirmed by the Senate despite a solid GOP majority.
In response, Trump has made it clear he will demand an end-run around an actual floor vote through recess appointments.
Naturally, that’s kindling for the almost-cold embers that he’s an authoritarian and will govern as a dictator.
Neither man is worth the price.
All of which gets to the larger damage the Gaetz and Kennedy nominations will inflict.
Trump is making it harder to achieve the dramatic reforms that he wants and that are so desperately needed.
And not only in Justice and HHS, but throughout the entire federal Leviathan.
The beast must be cut down to size and reoriented to its original purposes.
In that sense, compare the Gaetz and Kennedy nominations to some of Trump’s excellent picks.
Choosing Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of State has created attention on what new policies he and Trump would use to approach Europe, China and the Mideast.
The backdrop is a widely shared belief that American leadership based on peace through strength is desperately needed, and that Trump and Rubio are poised to deliver it.
His choice of Rep. Elise Stefanik to be his ambassador to the United Nations is also exhilarating.
In her brilliance and fearlessness, Stefanik could be the second coming of Jeane Kirkpatrick who, under President Ronald Reagan, deftly carved up Turtle Bay’s army of kleptocrats and socialist dead-enders.
Picks worth praising
Similarly, Trump’s nomination of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for Interior secretary is raising expectations that a revitalized energy sector will fuel the economy and again make America the envy of the world.
Then there’s Trump’s naming of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to a government efficiency project.
I believe it’s a stroke of brilliance that will be wildly popular because it holds the promise of vast savings to taxpayers and a reduction in the federal deficit.
If so, they will restore some trust in the federal government and may even lead state and local leaders to adopt the same approach to spending and regulations.
Trump’s other nominees, such as Tulsi Gabbard for director of National Intelligence and Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense, are controversial but very defensible examples of his determination to shake up Washington.
They represent a new generation of leaders who have proven their commitment to our history and ideals and will now be able to show their character and skills on bigger stages.
By contrast, picking Gaetz has overshadowed the partisan corruption at the Department of Justice.
And that’s not likely to change as long as he remains in play.
Ditto for Kennedy. HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy in need of change, but meaningful reform is a long-term project that will never get out of the starting gate with an erratic Kennedy at the helm.
Both men will waste political capital and time, neither of which Trump can afford.
