Free-for-All for Administration Jobs Illustrates Washington’s Swampy Ways
In politics right now, the story du jour focuses on the confirmation process for Cabinet officials in the second Trump Administration. In Washington and around the country, conservatives are asking themselves: Will all of the nominees get confirmed, which ones will get held up or rejected (and by whom), and how will the process affect Trump’s new Administration and individual Senators?
But a more telling narrative might lie nearby, in the way in which those nominees got chosen to begin with. The free-for-all for senior jobs within the new Administration—an anonymous transition source in an NBC report called the maneuvering “like Game of Thrones”—says much about how Washington operates, and not necessarily in a good way.
Swampy Behavior
Consider for instance this recent report from Politico:
As Richard Grenell made a bid after the election to be Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, a flurry of social media posts from MAGA influencers started popping up, advocating for the President-elect to pick him. Around the same time, an associate of Grenell had approached conservative social media influencers…offering paid contracts of as much as five figures to post favorably about Grenell.
For his part, Grenell denied the allegations, and Politico admitted that “there is no evidence directly linking the influencer campaign to Grenell.” That said, it appears someone was attempting to hire influencers to post content favorable to Grenell, given that Politico obtained a contract stating that the influencer would publish content “during ‘peak posting times,’ that ‘content must appear genuine,’ and it could not ‘appear as an overt advertisement or promotional message.’”
Put aside for a moment the “pay-to-play” element of the story—the irony of specifying that an influencer’s posts “must appear genuine” and not look like an “overt advertisement” when they were exactly that. To put it mildly, the episode has more than a whiff about it.
I don’t know much about Ric Grenell, and don’t have strong opinions on him based on what little I do know. But there’s an obvious question in this story: Would you want someone to become Secretary of State who paid off influencers—or even hung around other people who thought it would be a good idea to pay off influencers on his behalf—to get the job? I know I wouldn’t—and not just because this type of promotional operation, had it remained secret, could have made a key national security official susceptible to blackmail from foreign actors.
Status-Seeking Climbers
I have heard other stories in recent weeks about the lengths to which some individuals are going to obtain plum jobs in the new Administration. They tend to combine what outside-the-Beltway types (or “normal people”) would call typical “Swampy” behavior with the kind of aggressive ambition epitomized in Election, the 1999 black comedy about a high school student council campaign.
Sometimes, drama and conflict arise because an individual is dead-set on position X, already promised to someone else. Politico claimed this happened with Grenell, who allegedly turned down other Administration jobs and “told people in Trump’s orbit that it was Secretary of State ‘or bust.’” Whether this happened with Grenell or not, a fixation with a particular post makes an individual’s motivation clear: They care less about doing something—i.e., joining an Administration and having a positive impact on policy however they can—than about being someone, and having a specific title, large salary, impressive retinue, or some other trapping of power.
At times, this type of posturing, clandestine influence-peddling, and backstabbing during the vetting for senior positions brings to mind Groucho Marx’s infamous quip about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member. But on the other hand, that dismissive attitude also means that otherwise qualified people may eschew an attempt at a senior position, primarily because they consider it not worth the hassle.
The Freedom of Independence
Avoiding politics as blood sport gives one a liberating amount of candor. Once they get inside the Beltway, people often get themselves into trouble because they want something—more money, power, a cushy job, a committee assignment, or even a better parking spot on Capitol Hill. So they change their positions, keep their mouths shut, twist themselves into knots, or otherwise lose their way because integrity gets in the way of ambition.
But on the flip side, if you don’t actually want something, then The Powers That Be have little control over you. That tends to infuriate them, because the candid person can speak inconvenient truths that others don’t want to hear.
In another universe, Secretary of Inconvenient Truths sounds like a great Cabinet post for a Washington that often tries to overstate its own importance. I just hope someone won’t have to hire influencers to try to get the position.