Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of modern times for many reasons beyond the fact that he didn’t have much competition. We are referring, of course, to Tricky Dick Nixon, Jimmy Carter, the Bush’s, Barry and the clown-shows thereafter.
Foremost among the valid reasons for the Gipper’s success, however, was James Baker—the most astute White House chief of staff ever—and his inner team. And at least this much we can say with first-hand knowledge: Baker was not just a smooth, savvy political operator and deft administrator. He was also deeply versed in policy substance and therefore had a unique ability to comprehend, rapidly assess and modulate the relentless inflow to the Oval Office of policy papers and interest group adverts from all corners of the government.
So doing, he kept the Gipper on message and out of countless detours and troubles that would have otherwise sunk his presidency. Indeed, Ronald Reagan earned the Great Communicator moniker in large part because Jim Baker was at his elbow during his formative first term keeping him focused on the core message of restoring noninflationary prosperity at home and peace in the world abroad.
Needless to say, we knew the Gipper and, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s famous riposte to Dan Quayle in the 1992 VP debate, Donald J. Trump is no Ronald Reagan. Indeed, the Donald is the most ill-equipped, ill-prepared and ill-tempered person to enter the Oval Office since Harry Truman at least, and probably Edith Wilson, too. And the latter, of course, was purely an accident—a usurper who surreptitiously seized the reins of government in the fall of 1919 when Woodrow Wilson succumbed to a paralyzing cerebral embolism at the end of his League of Nation’s whistle stop campaign across the USA and neglected to inform the country of his complete incapacity thereafter.
So the truth is, there is only one thing that can prevent the Donald’s impending second-term from devolving into a nation-wrecking gong show. To wit, America needs a 21st century Jim Baker because the Donald is just too damn impulsive, uninformed, self-absorbed and recklessly bombastic to function effectively as the nation’s President on his own steam; and also because the preponderance of official Washington is so deeply infected by the TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that it will otherwise distract him endlessly and completely in schoolyard name-calling and petty insults, incidents and indecencies.
As it happens, in recent weeks Trump has actually stood up a solid team of newbies to Trump World who can make all the difference. He needs to make RFK Jr. his chief of staff, and Bobby Kennedy, in turn, needs to park in the West Wing directly across from his office the team of Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk and Vice-president JD Vance, too (in a side office away from the VP’s ceremonial digs in the Siberian precincts of the EOB).
As it happens, this is the first time that Trump has been surrounded by a team of serious, informed right-thinking adults not afflicted with beltway-bred UniParty dogma, neocon mental infirmities or wackadoo rightwing xenophobia since he descended down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015. If given the chance and control of the White House switchboard of power, therefore, they could potentially keep the Donald on message and on plan for prosperity at home and peace in the world not unlike what the Gipper accomplished during the Baker era.
Unfortunately, there is good reason to fear that the Kennedy Five could end up in their own form of bureaucratic Siberia. That is, upon being bestowed honorific titles such as special assistant to the presidential or chairs of White House Task Forces on MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), FW&A (fraud, waste and abuse) and other noble purposes, they end up billeted in empty GSA space far from the beating heart of White House power. And after making recommendations that the real government would readily ignore, the soon to be in-the-ditch Trump Administration wouldn’t have a prayer of implementing them even if they could get the Donald’s undivided attention for more than an hour.
Indeed, we see the handwriting of disaster on the wall already in an article fresh from Politico, which is the Swamp’s preferred organ of UniParty propaganda. Entitled “Who Might Make up Trump’s Cabinet”, it is loaded with pedigreed neocon names for national security posts including Marco Rubio, Robert O’Brien, Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo. So exactly how would that gang of warmongers and global hegemonists possibly further the cause of peace and drastic shrinkage of America’s dangerously bloated Warfare State?
And while the Politico folks were at it they smoked out Deep State lifers like Bob Lighthizer for Secretary of the Treasury and Eric Hargan for HSS. For crying out loud, Lighthizer has been a corporate trade policy shill for the last three decades and Hargan was the father of Operation Warp Speed at HSS in the first Trump Administration!
All of these dudes were adept at filling the Swamp, not draining it. That’s how they got the Washington chops to make the Politico roster in the first place.
Yet that’s not the half of it. Far more important than the secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury and HSS combined is the chief of staff role. With a typically weak Washington insider you will get ineffective government under almost any president, but totally chaos under the master of chaos himself.
Yet the Politico roster for this make or break post includes two babes in the woods and an utterly failed UniParty GOP lifer. As to the former we are referring to Brooke Rollins, who came from Texas GOP politics and was head of the no-count Office of American Innovation and later the acting director of the equally useless Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump White House; and also Susie Wiles, the daughter of a NFL football player and famous sports broadcaster, who had spent several decades running mostly small-time GOP political campaigns until she became chief of staff for Trump’s PAC in exile at Mar-a-Lago.
These two wouldn’t know from a traffic jam in the Roosevelt Room when it comes to Washington power and policy. And the third candidate—the disgraced ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy—has spent his entire career on the public teat filing the very Swamp that the Donald professes to truly drain this time around.
And yet and yet. The Donald’s up and running transition team is co-chaired by two loyalists who know virtually nothing about Washington power and policy-making. This includes Wall Streeter Howard Lutnick, who seems to have a crypto axe to grind and Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, who lost a race for the Senate twice and got no closer to the White House during the first Trump Administration than the far side of the Swamp known as the Small Business Administration.
Undoubtedly, these Trump loyalists think Cabinet jobs are very important, when actually it is the five people led by the Chief of Staff that actually count far, far more than even the SecDef. And that’s all the more so in what will otherwise by a chaotic and rudderless Trump Administration 2.0.
Fortunately, it also happens that in addition to the Cabinet-focused Co-Chairs, there are two other people with innate savvy and impressive street smarts on the transition team. They happen to be the Donald’s sons—-Don Jr. and Eric.
And that’s the grand opening for the Kennedy Five. They urgently need to enlist Don and Eric in the cause of staffing the inner circle of the White House with Kennedy, Gabbard, Ramaswamy, Musk and Vance.
And that’s especially true of the latter two. Vice-Presidents can do little more than go to the funerals of newly passed global leaders unless they are included in the inner circle on a daily operational basis in the West Wing. And while Elon Musk may be the richest man on the planet, his only hope of really changing the direction of government is if he is positioned as second Deputy President or Director of OMB.
Still, the sons might well have a decent chance at persuading DJT to bring the Kennedy Five into the inner sanctum because it is evident that the Donald is enamored by the fact that he has been embraced by a Kennedy; and also that the Kennedy Five have been unstinting in their collective efforts to bring his campaign message to a whole new and broader part of the American electorate.
What Don Jr. and Eric have to do, however, is to persuade the old man to let the Kennedy Five “go wild” not just on health, food and medicines, but on the Deep State in its entirety—a task which can only be accomplished from the inner sanctum of the West Wing.
Donald Trump: “Robert F. Kennedy cares more about human beings and health and the environment than anybody.” “I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines.” “He’s a great guy. He truly cares about this, and it’s an honor.”
Needless to say, the Kennedy Five would have some considerable wood to chop if they are to rescue the Donald from the crash landing of misdirected policy detours. Their job would be to—
Sideline massive immigrant deportations in favor of targeted removal of criminals and a wide gate for vetted guest workers.
The harnessing of Trumpian tariffs to revenue raising and/or middle class tax relief rather than out-of-this-world protectionism.
A one-two punch of bringing the Empire home and slashing the defense budget by 50% in a drive to cap the nation’s exploding public debt.
A root-and-branch reform of the Fed designed to remove it from the business of enriching Wall Street speculators and monetizing the debts of spendthrift Washington politicians.
In the absence of such disciplined refocus the public debt is set to explode, thereby sending the US economy tumbling into the drink of deep and stubborn stagflation and ultimately leaving Donald Trump’s second administration in a category now occupied by Herbert Hoover. On those matters we will amplify in Part 2.