Donald Trump's nomination of longtime supply-side economic crackpot Stephen Moore to a seat on the Federal Reserve is already not going well. Not only is Moore a poster child of serial Wrongness in his economic prescriptions and predictions, to the point of being discredited even among most rational conservative groups, but revelations that he recently was held in contempt of court for not making child support payments and that the IRS placed a $75,000 tax lien on his property for "fraudulent" tax errors would appear to indicate that the man's personal financial skills are just as tattered as his professional ones.
Not content to saddle the Federal Reserve with just one bizarre nominee, however, Donald Trump is now "expected" to pipe up with his next Federal Reserve pick, and it turns out to be ... Republican ex-presidential candidate and ex-pizza CEO Herman Cain?
"He won't formally announce until the vet is completed ... But he likes Cain and wants to put him on there," said a senior official who has discussed the matter with the president.
The nomination of Cain certainly simplifies the vetting process, as Cain arrives pre-disgraced from his failed 2012 Republican primary campaign. He was forced to drop out after multiple women came forward to accuse him of serial sexual harassment and misconduct, exactly one presidential election before the one in which the Republican Party decided that harassment and assault charges against a would-be president were Just Fine.
Cain was also widely mocked for a campaign platform that consisted nearly entirely of "9-9-9", the Cain proposal to replace most federal taxes with a transaction, sales, and personal income tax all set to the default tax values used by the popular city simulation game SimCity. (Cain's campaign insisted this to be coincidence, not inspiration.)
While the very serious sexual allegations against Cain would still seem to preclude giving the man a top position in the federal government, Team Trump has not been shy in promoting the party's newer, Trump-headed arguments of Oh yeah? So what. And Cain has at least set foot in the Federal Reserve hallways before, as chair of the Kansas City Reserve in the early ‘90s; between this and tenures at Burger King and Godfather's Pizza the man already can run rings around Stephen Moore's credentials.
Which is not saying much, but a core premise of Republicanism under Trump is that government is not something to be actually taken seriously, or to be done by professionals. It is avenue for elevating friends and allies, who are then tasked with shuttering as much of government as they can each manage before being themselves tossed or a new election rolls around. Arriving pre-disgraced at this point may only be considered a time-saver.