When President Trump nominated Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, the most common reaction was one of confusion.
No one suggested he was a bad fellow. Former President Barack Obama hired him as his physician at the White House. He wasn’t a longtime Trump hanger-on getting a sinecure, and nor was he some kind of sharp-elbowed ideologue. People from both parties had a reasonably high opinion of him.
But no one thought him well qualified to turn around what had long been one of the worst-run agencies in the federal government. Scandals have plagued the agency for years, and the previous secretary was just bounced for using agency money to take his wife on vacation, so there is a clear problem with hiring a new man whose learning curve would be steep. The Department of Veterans Affairs desperately needs a fix, and Trump knows it. He made big promises to veterans during his 2016 presidential campaign, and it’s probably an important reason he won.
But, at the same time, Trump is disinclined to be thorough and congenitally disposed to wing things instead, so he seems simply to have picked someone he thought was a decent fellow, rather as when former President George W. Bush picked Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court, a nomination that showed he was not taking the job seriously.
It appears that Trump didn’t even take the basic precaution of vetting Jackson. He apparently reasoned that the good doctor and a pleasant fellow with bonafides from both parties would surely be a good Veterans administrator.
It was a blunder. Jackson is mired in controversy over accusations he drinks excessively and has created a poisonous work environment. Such accusations are disquietingly vague — people differ greatly on how much drinking is too much — but still, such concerns would have been better discovered before the nomination than after.
Jackson deserves the benefit of the doubt, but he clearly faces a bloody confirmation process from ruthlessly oppositional Democrats and skeptical Republicans, plus public humiliation that has already begun.
It can be no surprise the president began yesterday gently but clearly pulling the rug from under his nominee, suggesting publicly and repeatedly that although Jackson would have his full backing if he chose to proceed with the nomination, the admiral might well want to pull out and avoid the maelstrom he is about to go through. That isn’t the sound of a president rushing into the breach to fight for a wounded comrade. This is why nominees are vetted, for their own good as much as anything else.
Trump takes an overly casual approach to these things. He needs to be taught that there is no “Easy Button” in government. It’s anything but easy. He has the wrong impression because he doesn’t realize what’s required to do it well.
Trump ran for president as an outsider promising major change in how things are done. So it stands to reason that he might approach nominations and other matters in unconventional ways. In fact, when his nomination of Andy Puzder as Labor Secretary failed, the real marvel was that more of his original nominations hadn’t gone that badly or worse.
But Trump has a blind spot about governing that he needs to think about. When he remarked, “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” he unwittingly revealed that he doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know. The only cure for such ignorance is to work hard to learn, and find people who know the ropes and whose advice he will trust. Otherwise, he’s going to keep running into problems like this.
Trump must take the task of governing more seriously. If he does, he will get much better results, and he will be remembered more fondly for what he accomplishes.
