Deadlock: Mattis Vs. White House On Pentagon Nominees

[nitpicker]

http://breakingdefense.com/2017/05/deadlock-mattis-vs-white-house-on-pentagon-nominees/

Deadlock: Mattis Vs. White House On Pentagon Nominees
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on May 08, 2017 at 3:52 PM

WASHINGTON: Chronic conflict between Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Trump White House has hobbled the nomination process for top Pentagon posts, a source familiar with the Trump personnel team tells Breaking Defense. In several cases, the source said, the Trump team recommended nominees with extensive experience and bipartisan respect — Rep. Randy Forbes, Sen. Jim Talent — only to have Mattis shoot them down. In others, Mattis picked outsider candidates — Philip Bilden, Mark Green — who later withdrew.

After more than 100 days in office, Mattis remains the only Trump appointee in place at the Pentagon, left without the usual support team of deputy, under, and assistant secretaries. It’s a lack that House Armed Services chairman Mac Thornberry has repeatedly and publicly lamented.
(snip)

So why has Trump repeatedly nominated men with huge fortunes but no Washington experience? “It’s definitely more complicated than ‘Donald Trump loves outsider billionaires,'” the source said. “Way more complicated than that,” because at least two of these names came from Mattis, not the Trump camp at all. White House’s candidates that Mattis shot down, by contrast, included not only Forbes but former Senator Jim Talent, the source said: “It’s hard to argue…that these are not high-caliber people.”

“My sense is that Mattis just doesn’t want people who he perceives as being political — which is ridiculous because we’re talking about political appointees,” the source seethed. “My theory (is Mattis thinks that) if you supported Donald Trump, you probably are not a high-caliber person.” “It’s caused stalemate,” the source summed up. “The president has some very specific defense priorities that he laid out in the campaign, and there’s no one minding the store to see that those priorities are implemented.” What about Mattis? “He doesn’t see his job as being the implementer of Donald Trump’s defense priorities,” the source said. “I think he sees himself as being a warfighter.”

Mattis does have two wars to run, three nuclear powers to deter, and none of the usual raft of Senate-confirmed aides to ensure the career civil service and military are actually doing what the administration wants. What’s more, at this point, even the best vetted, best qualified, most inoffensively apolitical appointees would struggle to get through the Senate before the 4th of July and August recesses start cutting into working days.
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(((IMO, this piece is a back-door slam from the Dump team against Mattis.)))

[roscoeroscoe]

1. I think you are right

If anyone in this 'administration' has some kind of sense, it would seem like Mattis