The Wall Street Journal 
President-elect Trump named the respected schools reformer Betsy DeVos from Michigan as Secretary of Education
The president-elect is assembling a who’s who of conservatives for his cabinet.
By
Daniel Henninger
The day before
Thanksgiving in New York, I bumped into a Trump adviser who actually knows what
is going on inside Trump Tower, as opposed to rumors inhabiting the media such
as this Tuesday headline: “Trump’s Team Frays Over Romney.” The message I got
was different: “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be just fine.”
In the seven days
since Thanksgiving, President-elect Trump has named the respected schools
reformer Betsy DeVos from Michigan as Secretary of Education. Rep. Tom Price of
Georgia, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a committed reformer of
ObamaCare, is Secretary of Health and Human Services. Elaine Chao, who was
George W. Bush’s reformist Labor Secretary for eight years, is the new
Secretary of Transportation.
Two businessmen will
enter the cabinet. Former Goldman Sachs
banker Steven Mnuchin is Treasury Secretary and Wilbur Ross, an investor in
distressed industries, will be Commerce Secretary.
Retired Marine Gen.
Jim Mattis, one of the most able officers to serve in Iraq and later head of
the U.S. Central Command, is within a hair of being Secretary of Defense.
Going deeper into the
policy weeds, Mr. Trump selected Indiana Medicaid reformer Seema Verma to run
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. The main Supreme Court adviser visiting
Trump Tower has been Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist
Society.
Bob Woodson, one of
this generation’s smartest and most productive black conservatives, has been in
to discuss with Mr. Trump how to make good on his campaign promise to champion
the inner cities.
If instead of these
individuals, the visitors to Trump Tower had been the alt-right activists of so
many progressive night sweats, it would have been reported across the New York Times’ front page and on CNN
round the clock, as if Godzilla and Mothra were trundling up Fifth Avenue.
Instead, the Trump
transition has been talking to and appointing some of the most accomplished and
serious individuals in Republican and conservative politics. Donald Trump isn’t
pulling rabbits out of a hat. Somebody at team Trump has a first-rate Rolodex.
By now, it should be
obvious that the Trump operation exists in two parts. One half is the
operation’s face, Donald Trump. The other half is the operation behind the
face. Mr. Trump’s persona has often made it difficult to take the entire Trump
phenomenon seriously. That, we learned, is a mistake.
Months ago, Mr.
Trump’s small team got hold of what is essentially a transition
textbook—“Presidential Transition Guide” published earlier
this year by the Partnership for Public Service. Its contributors worked on
pre-election transitions for John McCain,Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The
Trump preparatory group began to come together in Washington last spring.
In fact, both the
Trump and Clinton transition teams were in the same building at 1717 Pennsylvania
Avenue, a few blocks from the White House. Hillary’s people were on the 17th
floor and the Trump planners were on the eighth. They rode the elevators
together—and understood that one of them would fold up shop. Life is full of
surprises.
This Trump transition
operation is filled with specialists and veterans extending back to Ronald
Reagan’s transition, such as Ed Meese. While New York conducts auditions for
the cabinet’s speaking parts, the Washington policy shop is now recruiting the
under-, deputy- and assistant secretaryships.
I’m told calls are
arriving from solid people in the private sector who want to work on the Trump
project, without pay, and then get out. That is the private-to-public expertise
model created by Gov. Mitch Daniels in Indiana and followed by Govs. John
Kasich in Ohio and Bill Haslam in Tennessee.
Presumably this is
the intention in naming Messrs. Mnuchin and Ross. I would have preferred seeing
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling get Treasury, on the
assumption that his ability to get tax reform and the overhaul of Dodd-Frank
through Congress would have all but guaranteed a revived economy and a
successful first Trump term. Mr. Mnuchin will benefit from having Chairman
Hensarling as a lodestar in the House.
If Mr. Trump’s
foreign-policy goal is to “kill ISIS,” it would be hard to design a more
effective partnership than Jim Mattis at Defense and David Petraeus at State.
They know what to do and how to do it, but that’s not the most important thing.
As former commanders
in Iraq, Gens. Mattis and Petraeus have seen enough sacrifice from American
troops in the Middle East for two lifetimes. These are men who will not argue
for committing ground troops unless the U.S. is going to win and then secure
the durability of its dear investment there.
As for Kellyanne
Conway’s supposed anti-Romney rampage Sunday morning, I’m more inclined to see
it as Thomas Cromwell going on television to explain the requirements of
loyalty to Henry VIII’s associates.
