Time to vote for Donald Trump’s Worst Cabinet Member.
No fair just yelling “Wilbur Ross!” Our secretary of commerce appeared to be trying to sweep the field last week when he expressed bafflement that federal workers were going to food banks during the government shutdown rather than taking out loans.
I am convinced he heard that a Worst contest was on the way and wanted to nail down first place.
But let’s look at some other top contestants. For instance – after all the horrific stories about children separated from their parents at the border, what about our Department of Homeland Security chief?
“DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has earned the mantle of Worst Cabinet Secretary,” argued Austin Evers, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight. “Nielsen has enthusiastically generated false evidence to justify the president’s xenophobic immigration policies, zealously executed those policies in ways that have shocked the world, and then brazenly lied about both.”
Nielsen is definitely a contender.
And she’s been pretty effective in carrying out her plans, which is important when you’re part of a crew where ineptitude often cancels out bad intentions.
For instance, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos would certainly like to privatize the nation’s public schools, but she barely seems organized enough to get dressed in the morning. Still, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, believes DeVos should get Worst points for having “basically spent her time in that office working for everyone but the kids.”
Same story for Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. We haven’t seen much of Perry since he learned, to his chagrin, that his job is about the safe handling of nuclear materials, not drilling for oil.
Some Cabinet-watchers are discovering, to their shock, that they miss Scott Pruitt, who won last year’s competition as the anti-environment head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now we’ve got EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who’s way better at the job. Presuming you believe the job is screwing up the air and water.
“He’ll never buy lotion at the Ritz-Carlton, but the decisions he’s made are far worse than any Pruitt made,” said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, ticking off a long list of initiatives, including the repeal of the Clean Power Plan and a rollback on efforts to regulate mercury pollution. “Andy knows which levers to pull, and he hasn’t let any moss grow under his feet.”
A quarter of the Cabinet members are the high-end governmental equivalent of temps, including the acting heads of EPA, Defense, Justice and Interior.
People who care about land conservation were unnerved when the inept Ryan Zinke was replaced by Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist.
Still more to choose from! There’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former drug company executive and pharmaceutical lobbyist who’s supposed to be coming up with a plan to control prescription drug prices. While we’re waiting, family planning advocates continue to reel from the department’s war on contraception and abortion.
Or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who tried to rebrand State as the “Department of Swagger.” Really, he’s been promoting a new Swagger seal. “I thought it was a parody or a joke,” said David Wade, who was chief of staff at State during the Obama administration. But no such luck.
One challenge in picking a Worst Cabinet Member is that there’s so much competition. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, ticked off Pompeo, DeVos, Nielsen, Steve Mnuchin (“Certainly the slimiest Treasury secretary ever”) and Housing Secretary Ben Carson.
“But the winner is Wilbur Ross,” Ornstein concluded. “Powerful allegations of insider trading. Dissembled about his holdings before that. And wins the Marie Antoinette award to boot.”
Don’t let all this Wilbur lobbying sway you. Your vote counts! Let me know your Worst Cabinet Member pick and we’ll crown some winners next week.
The New York Times