Can Newbies Obliterate Iron Triangles?
Trump’s Inexperienced Nominees Shall Encounter Well-Organized Interests
President-Elect Donald Trump’s harbors deep hostility toward vested interests and Washington insiders he calls the “swamp” or “Deep State.” Political scientists prefer the name, “iron triangle,” as the nexus has three sides--narrow groups and organizations at the base, congressional committees on the left side, agencies and departments on the right. This trio of sides is linked together by 1) group endorsements, donations, and constituency mobilization, 2) committee earmarks and appropriations, and 3) agency largesse distributed to groups and constituents.
Trump’s attack is two-pronged. He has asked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is expected to save trillions by identifying waste and abuse, cutting regulations, eliminating programs, and dismantling agencies. But DOGE must rely on exposure, public relations, and the president’s bully pulpit, as it has no governmental authority to effectuate change.
The other tine has a finer point. Trump is selecting outsiders to obliterate, or at least contain, the triangles. Seventeen of his twenty-four Cabinet-level nominees are “newbies” who have never walked the hallways of executive power.
Presidents characteristically appoint “inners and outers,” familiar faces who trundle into high positions when their party wins, slip out to law offices, think tanks, and lobby firms on K street when the party loses. President Joe Biden appointed no less than seventeen inners and outers to the twenty-four cabinet-level positions in his administration. Trump has nominated only seven.
Most of Trump’s newbies offend the very triangles they are expected to control. A fracker will head the energy department, even though he is hostile to freshly green big oil. The governor of North Dakota, a farm and fossil fuel haven, shall command the environmentalists populating the interior department. To wrestle with college presidents, school districts, and teacher unions, Trump has chosen a former chair of an entertainment company devoted to the art form. A vaccine skeptic has been nominated to head health and human services. The departments in charge of defense, justice, commerce, and housing are also scheduled to be directed by secretaries suspicious of their respective iron triangles.
Cabinet candidates always express undying allegiance to those whose pleasure must be satisfied, but in the Trump II Administration it will be assured by their dependence on the White House. Only one of the nominees (discussed below) enjoys a national reputation in his or her field of expertise. Otherwise, newbies must rely heavily upon White House backing and can be dismissed without jeopardy. The trump card is in firm possession of the man who holds that name.
Three nominees are former presidential candidates, but they form no “team of rivals” comparable to Abraham Lincoln’s. Such a team would have included Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. Trump instead picked Tulsi Gabbard, a progressive, Democratic, former member of Congress from distant Hawaii, Doug Borgum, a small-state governor, and Robert Kennedy, Jr., a family reject.
That the newbies are marginal figures is of little concern to a television star on a show celebrated for apprentice dismissal. Nine of the fifteen cabinet-level department heads in Trump’s first administration were replaced, often within a year. The second administration got off to a good start when Trump’s initial, over-the-top pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, handed back his nomination. If Trump succeeds in persuading Congress to recess for longer stretches of time, he will be able to refill his cabinet with recess appointments that do not require Senate confirmation. At that point he can fire and hire at will.
Two exceptions to the triangle-busting strategy have emerged. The labor department will be led by a former member of Congress from Oregon who supports pro-union legislation. Ultra-liberal Senator Elizabeth Warren may back Lori Chavez-DeRemer on the grounds she “understands the importance of unions to represent workers and give them some power in the workplace.” If the Oregon ex-representative turns out, indeed, to be a friend of organized labor, Trump will have made a deal made to consolidate his working-class coalition. Family considerations are paramount in the second instance. The President-elect has nominated a prominent U. S. senator and rival presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, as his Secretary of State. The White House cannot afford to lose Rubio’s support, but, in return, the new president may be able to refer to his daughter-in-law, Lori Trump, as the senator from the great state of Florida.
Otherwise, Trump’s two-pronged, anti-insider strategy is well conceived. But triangles rank among the most stable of geometric forms, and iron is so indestructible it has named an archeological era. Though metal softens when touched by hot glare emanating from the Oval Office, presidential eyes are easily distracted by more pressing business. No matter how loyal, newbies, when left on their own, may lack what it takes to swing a mallet with the force and precision needed to smash a triangularly shaped piece of iron.
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Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a professor of government at Harvard University.