There are roughly 1,200 positions in the federal government that require Senate confirmation, including the senior officials who make up the president’s Cabinet. The first Cabinet official was confirmed in 1789 when the Senate unanimously approved President George Washington’s nomination of Alexander Hamilton to be treasury secretary.
The confirmation or denial process is a matter of 100 senators making judgement calls to determine whether a nominee is professionally qualified, exhibits leadership skills, is ethically fit, is morally just, doesn’t carry “baggage” and has the temperament for the job.
The adage “patience is a virtue” will most likely be tested by President-elect Donald Trump, his nominees, senators and the public in 2025, as the Center for Presidential Transition notes the confirmation process lasts around five months.
As our senators determine the fate of Trump’s nominees, the credibility of the senators is as much on the line as are the candidates and Trump himself. Here’s the question: Will the senators judge each candidate based on what is best for America’s 335 million citizens (people before party) or make the confirmation process a show of obedience to the president and/or politics (party before the people)?
Peggy Noonan, revered columnist for the conservative Wall Street Journal, wrote on Dec. 19: “Republican Senators must approach the hearings with gravity because … they are life-and-death appointments.” Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal characterized Trump’s Cabinet picks as “unconventional,” “lacking expertise” and reflecting “his idiosyncratic ideological impulses”.
Two recent polls should be an alert to our senators and cause them to think twice before voting “yes” on a Trump nominee: 1) A Dec. 5-9 AP-NORC poll found only three in 10 Americans have confidence in Trump’s Cabinet picks and 2) a Fox News poll revealed 50 percent disapprove of the president-elect’s Cabinet selections (even though 93 percent of Fox News viewers identify as Republican).
The media has been paying close attention. Chuck Todd of NBC News identified Pete Hegseth (Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (for the Department of Health and Human Services) and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (for director of national intelligence) as a “ low-character crowd.”
Other high-profile nominees under scrutiny include: Jay Bhattacharya, Pam Bondi, Tom Homan, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Elise Stefanik and Russell Vought.
Let’s face the facts. Nominating and confirming good Cabinet members has never been a hallmark of America’s presidents and senators. For starters, Andrew Jackson fired all of his Cabinet members except his postmaster general.
Here’s a sample of other poor picks:
- John F. Kennedy dismissed CIA Director Allen Dulles, who botched the Bay of Pigs operation.
- Lyndon Johnson removed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for escalating the Vietnam War.
- Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and three White House associates (H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean) were released from duty by Richard Nixon for their involvement in the Watergate scandal.
- Gerald Ford terminated several Nixon holdovers in what became known as the Halloween Massacre.
- Jimmy Carter requested the resignation of his entire Cabinet (very few resigned).
- Ronald Reagan dismissed Anne Gorsuch, his EPA administrator, for mismanaging $1.6 billion in the hazardous waste cleanup program.
- When Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos proposed blocking federal aid designed for minority students attending college, George H.W. Bush quickly ended his employment.
- Bill Clinton discharged William Sessions, the FBI director and Mike Espy, the secretary of agriculture.
- George W. Bush booted Paul O’Neill, secretary of the treasury, and Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense.
- Barack Obama ousted CIA Director David Petraeus and Michael Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
- Trump also fired Flynn, who has the distinction of being terminated by two different presidents. More than 90 percent of Trump’s executive officers turned over during his first presidency.
- Joe Biden’s executive officer turnover rate stands at 71 percent.
Obviously, presidents and senators have not always made good decisions on Cabinet members. Turnover is costly and is an obvious sign of poor management and poor judgement. Period.
We can do better. Don’t sit idly by during the current confirmation process without expressing your thoughts to your senators.
After you’ve done your due diligence of examining the background of the 12 Cabinet picks identified above, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your two senators’ offices. A staff member for each will answer your call, whereupon you can apprise them of your pick thoughts, which will be relayed to your senators.
Witnessing how your senators vote on each nominee will tell you whether their judgement matches yours. as well as if they put the people before the party or the party before the people.
Don’t fret over Trump’s Cabinet nominations; take action now before it’s too late. As noted in the Book of Common Prayer: “speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.