A job shuffle that would put Senator Tom Cotton in charge of the CIA is one of the worst ideas to come out of the Trump administration.
It’s not that Cotton couldn’t handle things at the intelligence agency. That’s not the problem. It’s what would be lost on Capitol Hill if Cotton, 40, leaves the Senate. He’s only been there for three years but he’s already a critical player.
Who came up with the proposal to use the Trump tax reform bill to kill ObamaCare’s mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance? (A two-fer that also allows for a bigger cut in taxes.) Who wants to kill “blue slips” so a single Democrat can’t block confirmation of Trump’s judicial nominees? Whose letter to Iran’s mullahs, endorsed by 46 Senate colleagues, warned that a nuclear arms agreement not ratified by the Senate wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on?
The answer is Cotton. And I could go on. So I will. Who is the senator closer to Trump than Cotton is? My guess is nobody, though no one refers to Cotton as Trumpian. Cotton was even part of the group that met in March 2016 with Trump and agreed on a plan to nominate conservative Supreme Court justices. Justice Neil Gorsuch is the result.
Cotton pushes. He’s out front. The Almanac of American Politics says he has an “unapologetically bold approach.” He’s a team player but willing to rebel against Republicans when they act like mushy moderates. When some conservatives backed criminal justice reform to reduce the prison population, Cotton wasn’t an ally. “If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem,” he said.
How would the job shuffle play out? It would ease Rex Tillerson out as secretary of State, replace him with Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director, and bring Cotton aboard as the intelligence agency’s new boss.
I’ll concede this two-cushion shot sounds sensible and might appeal to Trump. Only it shouldn’t. Trump relies on his instincts. They got him to the White House. Since he’s balked at the shuffle so far, I suspect his instincts are telling him something. I hope he interprets them wisely.
For one thing, while CIA directors aren’t a dime-a-dozen, the president wouldn’t have difficulty finding a good one. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton would be a smart choice.
Last but not least, there’s the presidency to consider. Cotton is seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, if Trump doesn’t seek reelection. (I have no inside information on his plans.)
In any case, it’s the Senate that offers a path to the White House. The CIA doesn’t. It’s the black hole of Washington, a place where bright futures die. Some may think it was key to George H. W. Bush’s election. But they’re wrong.
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There’s a disagreement over when Senator Al Franken was doomed to be driven out of Congress over acts of sexual misconduct. I thought the moment came once the 7th or 8th woman stepped forward to say she’d been harassed. And that’s when Senator Kirsten Gillibrand declared it a “necessity” that he resign. An avalanche of Democrats joined her.
But one factor was overlooked. The day before Franken pulled the plug, Representative John Conyers announced his resignation over harassment allegations. Would it have been possible for congressional Democrats to have forced out Conyers, who is black, and let Franken, who is white, remain in office? No. The departure of Conyers doomed Franken.
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President Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing to enact their sweeping tax reform bill as quickly as possible. Polls show the public views the bill unfavorably by margins as large as 3-to-1. These two things don’t go together.
Yet Republicans believe the tax measure will boost their prospects in the 2018 and 2020 elections. “We think it will produce results, results we will certainly be able to talk to the American people about,” Senate Majority Mitch McConnell told ABC News.
McConnell’s optimism should sound familiar. It’s similar to what Senator Chuck Schumer said about ObamaCare after it was enacted in early 2010. It was unpopular then but soon the public would learn how wonderful it is, he said. Not quite. Republicans won 63 seats and control of the House in the 2010 midterm election—in which ObamaCare was the top issue.
Now Republicans believe tax reform, with its big cut in the corporate tax rate along with middle-class tax relief, should begin jacking up the economy next spring or summer. And that will lead to new era of steady economic growth at 3 percent or higher. Liberal economists say no. Their view is we’re living in era with growth stuck at two percent or lower.
There’s a wrinkle. The economy may have improved perceptively by the November 2018 election. That, however, doesn’t guarantee Republicans will escape defeat. An issue we’re not thinking about today may be dominant. Politics is fickle.
