I commend news agency columnists who publish research-based and value-added (versus “my opinion”) op-eds on a daily or frequent basis. Submitting an occasional essay allows me time to ponder contemporary issues and explore the latest hot topic.
Since Aug. 6, Perplexity and Google have helped me examine over 30 documents to determine the best and worst U.S. presidential cabinets. Based upon academic studies and expert analysis, here are the results.
Judging presidential cabinet strengths and weaknesses
While determining cabinet strengths and weaknesses can be debatable, broad research-based consensus, historical investigation, and political science scholarship supports a generally accepted conclusion to judging the quality of a presidential cabinet. Some key components include: expertise, competence, experience, operational effectiveness, ethical standards, scandals, internal White House diversity, and the ability for cabinet members to challenge the president without repercussions.
Several other dimensions to assess cabinet performance across U.S. presidencies include: turnover rates, public opinion and approval ratings, vacancy rates, delays in appointments, effectiveness of cabinet members’ actions, and the ability to maintain stability and implement policy.
Cabinet findings synopsis
Five different and independent research studies summarized that U.S. presidential cabinets can be compared, contrasted, and evaluated based upon three factors: 1) stable, low-turnover, and well-staffed cabinets are generally seen as higher performing, 2) high-turnover and high-vacancy cabinets are associated with decreased effectiveness, and 3) appointment of experts and diverse talent correlates with improved policy outcomes and cabinet success.
Best presidential cabinets
The following presidential cabinets are widely regarded as among the best in U.S. history:
1. Abraham Lincoln’s (Rep., 1861-1865) cabinet—known as the Team of Rivals—with people like William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edwin Stanton, challenged yet complemented Lincoln, helping with the Union’s victory and abolition of slavery.
2. George Washington’s (no political party, 1789-1797) cabinet included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph, which Lindsay Chervinsky and other historians point to as a foundational model for effective executive leadership.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (Dem., 1933-1945) cabinet included Frances Perkins (first female cabinet secretary) and Henry Morgenthau Jr., who helped shape and implement the New Deal policies and guide America through World War II.
Worst presidential cabinets
Historical surveys cite the following presidential cabinets among the worst in U.S. history, predominantly due to issues of incompetence, corruption, and scandal:
1. Warren G. Harding’s (Rep., 1921-1923) cabinet is widely regarded as the worst of the worst due to the infamous Teapot Dome scandal, widespread corruption among cabinet members, and for exemplifying poor cabinet selection due to cronyism and misconduct.
2. Ulysses S. Grant’s (Rep., 1869-1877) cabinet was plagued by corruption, the Whiskey Ring scandal, the Crédit Mobilier affair, and unethical governance.
3. Donald J. Trump’s (Rep., 2017-2021 and 2025-2029) cabinets have been widely criticized for their lack of qualifications, record-setting high turnover rates, appointments based on loyalty over capability, conflicts of interest, stark public dissatisfaction, and poorly vetted appointees, but approved by Republican Senators.
Turnover of appointees is a proxy for performance and stability
Research is replete that turnover rates of presidential appointments are an indicator of presidential performance and a concrete indicator of stability. High cabinet turnover has significant negative consequences for governance and leadership effectiveness, such as loss of institutional memory, loss of expertise, lack of cohesion, and stalled initiatives.
Frequent cabinet turnover has serious consequences. It disrupts policy formation, diminishes efficiency, harms morale, undermines public trust, and weakens agency autonomy and long-term strategic capabilities.
During Trump’s first presidency, a record turnover occurred with 20 of his 24 cabinet picks either quitting or being “de-hired” by Trump. Furthermore, 92 percent of the 65 people who were on Trump’s 2017-2021 “A Team” left their appointed office.
During the first 220 days of Trump’s 2.0 administration, he’s already had turnover in 13 key positions, notably Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Cameron Hamilton, Dr. Carla Hayden, Dr. Debra Houry, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, Dr. Peter Marks, Dr. Susan Monarez, Elon Musk, Shira Perlmutter, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Vivek Ramaswamy, Dr. Drew Snyder and Mike Waltz. Furthermore, at least 148,000 federal employees have left Trump’s 2.0 workforce.
Trump 1.0 and 2.0
From a cabinet member’s perspective, Trump’s two attempts at being president are near the bottom of 47 presidencies. Rigorous historical research would suggest this does not bode well that the 2025-2029 time period will be successful.
With all of the chaos, uncertainty, dictatorial behavior, flip-flopping, and 192 executive orders, 47 memoranda, and 79 proclamations brought to the table by Mr. Trump since Jan. 20 and controversial cabinet member actions, the proverb “hope springs eternal” has to be Americans’ guide to find optimism. A second proverb—“you reap what you sow”—is before Mr. Trump and the GOP Senators who approved the cabinet nominations.
Let’s face reality. A cabinet that ranks historically low with respect to competence, ethical standards, experience, and other competency criteria makes the U.S. vulnerable to a multitude of operational inefficiencies, policy blunders, ethical mishaps, scandals, conflicts of interest, conspiracies, and foreign intervention. Americans are in a situation where only time will tell the outcome.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.