You can say this about Donald Trump: If he becomes president, his administration is not likely to be a replay of the George W. Bush administration, with most top roles filled by retreads from still earlier Republican presidential administrations. That’s because the big names—and plenty of the small ones—in Republican policy don’t want to work for Trump:
One former Republican official who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency put it this way: “You’d have to worry about your future career and the way you’re perceived in these things. You just kind of think of how he deals with people. Would you really want to work for him?”
So what’s a Trump administration going to look like if the Paul Wolfowitz types think they’re too good for it?
“The bottom line is Trump will be able to fill these jobs because there is a whole class of people who want these titles so badly it doesn’t matter who is president,” said a former senior George W. Bush administration official. “But these are B- or C-level people. They are honorable, but not very good. The A-level people, and there are not that many of them to begin with, mostly don’t want to work for Trump. He will cut the A-level bench of available policy talent at least in half, if not more.”
You don’t have to praise the big names of the George W. Bush administration to think it would be truly terrifying to see what a B- and C-level administration headed by Donald Trump would look like.