Author Topic: Trump learning to love Bush aides (Read 518 times)

corbe · « **on:** April 17, 2017, 10:58:21 pm »

Trump learning to love Bush aides

The president’s administration is increasingly tapping Bush-era officials as staffing woes persist.

By Tara Palmeri
| 04/17/17 05:12 AM EDT
| Updated 04/17/17 12:16 PM EDT

Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly declared that “the last thing we need is another Bush,” as he vowed to take on two political dynasties — the Bushes and the Clintons.

But as president, Trump has been increasingly dipping into the talent pool from the George W. Bush administration that he regularly vilified during the campaign to now fill critical administration posts.

Trump promised to drain the swamp and rely on Washington outsiders, but nearly 100 days into his term, the staffing and political realities have set in, and his team has been turning to some of the top old hands of the Bush administration.

Just this past week, the White House sent out a news release, announcing the nomination of four confirmation-level hires, with half being former Bush administration staffers.

Marshall Billingslea, a Bush State Department and Pentagon alumni, was nominated to be assistant secretary for terrorist financing in the Department of the Treasury; and John J. Sullivan, who served in senior posts in the Justice, Defense and Commerce Departments during the Bush administration, was nominated to be deputy secretary of state.

Those nominations are in addition to earlier waves of appointments of Bush-era officials, including high-profile aides such as Dina Powell, who now serves as national security adviser H.R. McMaster’s No. 2.

Seven sources involved in the staffing process, including two administration sources, have said there's been a concerted outreach to some old Bush hands to serve as the "adults" at some of the top agencies. Their appeal is that they likely can be confirmed quickly through the Senate in key posts like deputy secretary, undersecretary and assistant secretary positions.

Those involved said there has been varying levels of resistance from the Bush veterans despite the outreach, as they decide whether it’s more important to help a relatively inexperienced president than to harbor grudges about Trump’s scorched-earth campaign. There's also a risk that a heavy presence of Bush officials in Trump's administration could turn off the president's base of supporters, who revel in his outsider reputation and are already wary of Trump's recent tack away from some populist stances.

One senior administration official said the percolation of Bush alumni is partly due to the administration's frustration with the slow hiring and confirmation process. Some rushed appointments during the transition were done without proper vetting which resulted in the withdrawal of the nomination of Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder and Army Secretary nominee Vincent Viola.

Since the early embarrassments, vetting procedures have been tightened up, but the extra scrutiny has slowed the nomination process, frustrating many staffers in federal agencies who are still left dealing with Trump’s beachhead teams, the official said. According to the Partnership for Public Service, Trump still needs to nominate 475 of the 554 key positions that require Senate confirmation.

"It's not a big secret that the administration has been working hard to get staffed up, and the biggest natural pool of available talent willing to serve the country also served in the prior administration," said Phil Musser, who served as deputy chief of staff and senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the George W. Bush administration.

"The bottom line is that you need experienced hands in the boiler rooms of the agencies. ... Personnel ultimately is policy, and the administration is wise to rely on a stable of experienced hands, irrespective of what their position was during the campaign,” added Musser, who has been a political adviser to Vice President Mike Pence but has not formally joined the administration.

The White House did not comment about the influx of Bush-era officials.

Many Republicans have been waiting in the wings for eight years for another GOP administration, especially those who served in more junior roles in the Bush administration. An administration job typically has huge cachet in Washington, but for the Trump administration, the pool of Bush officials who are willing to serve is relatively small.

Trump's harsh words against George W. Bush and his decision to go into Iraq — not to mention Trump’s attacks on his brother Jeb Bush — turned off many of these potential candidates. The administration's requirement that job candidates must have never been against Trump makes the pool even smaller. A big chunk of the Republican national secretary community under Bush signed "Never Trump" letters which automatically disqualifies any candidate.

Eliot A. Cohen, a State Department counselor during the Bush administration, briefly helped to recruit talent for the Trump administration until he was turned off by their resistance to talented "Never Trumpers." He predicted that more Bush alumni will feel comfortable coming into the administration if it continues to shift to the conservative mainstream, which has accelerated over the past couple weeks as Trump bombed Syria, embraced NATO and abandoned his plans to name China a currency manipulator.

Cohen said some Bush veterans see the marginalization of chief strategist and populist hero Steve Bannon as a sign that it's safe to work for Trump. "As the administration is looking a bit more normalish, there will be more people who will be willing to go in," he said.

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-bush-aides-officials-237243