The White House – or more specifically the inner circle of
Donald Trump – is dominated by overwhelmingly underqualified senior staffers.
There is, of course, “Jarvanka,” the eager power couple
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who wield vast familial advisory power and a
portfolio more of less of their own choosing (including, in Kushner’s case, the
Middle East peace process), despite having absolutely no prior experience in
public policy, international affairs or politics. That is, zero
experience.
Then come Stephen Miller and Hope Hicks, both of whom
joined the Trump campaign more or less as glorified interns. With the ouster of Steve Bannon, Miller, a
former Jeff Sessions’ staffer, has, at 32, become the de facto senior domestic
policy advisor to Trump. Melania-lookalike Hicks, just 28,
parlayed an exceedingly modest NYC public relations career into the White House
Communications Director position, having outlasted her three bosses (and predecessors in
the position) who collectively lasted a mere six months: Michael Dubke, Sean Spicer and Anthony
Scaramucci. Hicks, while no PR whiz, is
the ultimate sycophant and rarely appears to leave Trump’s side.
And then there is General John Kelly. Kelly is no spring chicken, and, as chief of
staff since last July, he has imposed some degree of managerial order on the
Bannon/Priebus/Jarvanka free-for-all that characterized the first months of the
Trump Administration. He quickly ousted
Scaramucci, forced all the others, including Jarvanka, to work through him for access
to Trump, and limited Trump’s paper flow (via top aide Rob Porter), thereby
eliminating the most dubious sources of extremist blather from Trump’s daily
consumption.
But Kelly, too, is significantly underqualified for the
job. The chief of staff position was created
(essentially) by Dwight Eisenhower, in the person of Sherman Adams, and the
most successful ones have combined every bit of Kelly’s no-nonsense discipline
and managerial competence with another pillar of expertise that Kelly lacks – that
of being the ultimate inside-the-Beltway-doer-fixer politico. The prototype chief is wily in the
legislative process, savvy in the nuances of Washington norms, and serves as the
overall GPS to successful presidencies, from routine priority setting to the severest crisis
management.
Consider this sampling of past chiefs to confirm this pedigree:
Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Hamilton Jordan, James Baker, Howard Baker, Ken
Duberstein, John Sununu, Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, John Podesta, Andrew
Card, Rahm Emanuel…these were all central casting DC insiders. They ably served presidents who, since Gerry
Ford, have largely been D.C. outsiders, either governors (Carter, Reagan,
Clinton and Bush 43) or relative newbies (one-term senator Barack Obama).
No president – ever – has needed the skill set of a classic
chief of staff more than Donald Trump, and General Kelly simply does not
measure up. Kelly may have
administrative skills in spades, and is certainly helpful on defense matters, but
his lack of political mojo has begun to show in sharp relief.
Kelly took center stage this week, and it was not
pretty. It’s never good news if the chief
of staff is making news (particularly if your president is Donald Trump). First Kelly charged that DACA-eligible
dreamers who had not signed up yet for the program were “too lazy to get off
their asses.” But he was just getting started as a newsmaker. It turns out Kelly has been enabling an
abuser for months now, the aforementioned, now-notorious, paper-pusher Porter, whose
application for security clearance had been held up because both of his
ex-wives told the FBI he abused them.
And this was known to Kelly since last fall.
In a simply spectacular miscalculation, Kelly not only kept
Porter on, but advanced his career, oblivious to the domestic violence
crosscurrents stimulated by the NFL’s wrist slapping treatment of Ray Rice in
2014, and then the tsunami of the #MeToo movement that outpaced Trump himself
as The Story of 2017.
Kelly’s job hangs in the balance, but he will likely
survive for now (despite making it clear he would resign if Trump so desired), perhaps
solely because of the paucity of candidates to replace him. Sure, Trump could slide over Gary Cohn or
Mick Mulvaney, but then who could be recruited to fill their slots? (Mulvaney is already doing two jobs, OMB and
the Consumer Protection Agency, which he inherited when Richard Cordray
resigned). Trump administration talent,
already a crisis issue, can only go in one direction, given how toxic a
position close to Trump has proven.
The brain drain crisis that threatens the White House
received a further blow when Rachel Brand, the #3 official in the house-afire
known as the Department of Justice, abruptly resigned. Brand stood to replace the embattled Rod Rosenstein
in the DOJ if he was fired by Trump, and thereby control the fate of Robert
Mueller. Now, her replacement may have
to commit to never firing Mueller in return for Senate confirmation.
Trump himself was oddly quiet for most of the week, taking
a backseat to Kelly, but the madness surfaced now and then. Trump decided it would be a fantastic idea to
have a military parade that Kim Jong-Un would envy, and we’ll see how General
Mattis deals with this one. Trump also
declared he wanted a government
shutdown, obviously unaware that the Senate and House leadership were nearing
the finish line on the spending bill (which was passed with little Trump involvement,
save for his signature on Friday morning.)
And while the stock market continued its precipitous fall – officially a
correction now that it has exceeded a 10% pullback – Trump, of course, avoided
the subject, by and large, avoiding the obvious: that if he claimed ownership of the market as
it rose, then he also owns it as it drops,.
The background is an unusual place for Trump to lurk, but
staying quiet usually serves him well. Trump’s approval rating inched
up another point, to 44%, this week, as he largely stayed in the shadows
while Porter exited, Hicks defended, Kelly twisted, McConnell and Schumer maneuvered
and Adam Schiff was outraged yet again.
Trump did surface at week’s end to nix the release of the
Democrats’ response to the infamous “Nunes Memo” which had laid an egg the week
before. He also issued a ridiculously
inappropriate defense of Porter, emphasizing, as with Roy Moore and so many
other abusive men Trump has defended, that Porter had denied all the charges,
and “I think you also have to remember that.”
And on Saturday, he tweeted an attack on the entire #MeToo movement,
complaining that “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.”
These actions and words occurred too late to be captured in
this week’s polling, so we will see if the fallout of the Kelly/Porter mess or
the Dem memo result in deterioration next week.
(A
note on methodology: BTRTN calculates our weekly approval ratings using an average of the four
pollsters who conduct daily or weekly approval rating polls: Gallup Rasmussen,
Reuters/Ipsos and You Gov/Economist. This provides consistent and accurate
trending information and does not muddy the waters by including infrequent
pollsters. The outcome tends to mirror
the RCP average but, we believe, our method gives more precise trending.)
SaturData Review
|
Jan 2017 Post-Inaug.
|
Wk ending Feb 2
|
Wk ending Feb 9
|
Change vs. Last Wk
|
Change vs. Jan 2017
|
Trump Approval
|
48%
|
43%
|
44%
|
+1 pp
|
-4 pp
|
Trump Disapproval
|
44%
|
53%
|
54%
|
-1 pp
|
+10 pp
|
Trump Net Approval
|
+4 pp
|
-10 pp
|
-10 pp
|
0 pp
|
-14 pp
|
Generic Ballot Dem - Rep
|
D + 6
|
D + 6
|
D + 7
|
+1 pp
|
+1 pp
|
Trumpometer
|
0%
|
+13%
|
+11%
|
-2 pp
|
+11 pp
|
Unemployment
Rate
|
4.7
|
4.1
|
4.1
|
0%
|
13%
|
Consumer
Confidence
|
114
|
125
|
125
|
0%
|
10%
|
Price
of Gas
|
2.44
|
2.72
|
2.75
|
-1%
|
-13%
|
Dow-Jones
|
19,732
|
25,521
|
24,190
|
-5%
|
23%
|
Most
recent GDP
|
2.1
|
2.6
|
2.6
|
0%
|
24%
|
The generic ballot crept
up a point in the Democrats’ favor, to +7 over the GOP in this week’s polling. This margin, if it held until November, would
translate to a +49 seat pickup in November for the Dems (according to our BTRTN
proprietary regression equation), far more than the +24 they need to take over
the House.
(For
the generic ballot, we take an average of the only two pollsters who conduct
weekly generic ballot polls, Reuters/Ipsos and You Gov/Economist, again for
trending consistency.)
The stock market correction
dropped the Trumpometer down to +11%, meaning that our five
economic indicators have, on average, increased by 11% since Trump’s Inauguration
on January 20, 2017, a drop from +18 just three weeks ago. Polling shows that Trump now “owns” the
economy full stop, so we will see going forward how he manages whatever future
downturns await him.
(The Trumpometer aggregates a set of
economic indicators and compares the resulting index to that same set of
aggregated indicators at the time of the Trump Inaugural on January 20, 2017.
The basic idea is to demonstrate whether the country is better off economically
now versus when Trump took office.
The indicators are the unemployment rate, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, the Consumer Confidence Index, the price of gasoline, and the GDP.)
The indicators are the unemployment rate, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, the Consumer Confidence Index, the price of gasoline, and the GDP.)
POLITICAL STAT OF THE WEEK
Trump, of course, touts his impact on the stock market, but
in point of fact, the S&P 500 rose faster in Barack Obama’s first year than
it did in Trump’s. Note that the
one-year anniversary of Trump’s Inaugural preceded
this correction, so, in other words, even when the market was riding high,
Trump did not outpace Obama in Year One.
S&P 500 YEAR ONE GROWTH UNDER OBAMA VS.
TRUMP
|
|||
President
|
Jan 20 Inaug
|
Jan 20 Year 1
|
Change
|
Obama
|
850
|
1,150
|
35%
|
Trump
|
2,270
|
2,810
|
24%
|
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