With Patrick Shanahan, Donald Trump again fails his promise on stocking 'best people'

Recruiting and retaining qualified people is a key to success for any organization. But far more than any previous president, Donald Trump has had a troubling inability to attract and keep top talent. 

In some cases this has been the result of his wildly inappropriate choices. Among them were a national security adviser now facing prison time, a Health and Human Service secretary who spent at least $341,000 on taxpayer-funded private jet flights and an Interior secretary who left under a cloud of ethics investigations.

In other cases, Trump has had reasonable people in charge and then made it impossible for them to do their jobs. These include former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and former Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Now the administration has found yet another way to fail on personnel matters — by not properly vetting nominees. Case in point is Patrick Shanahan, the acting Defense secretary who on Tuesday said he'll resign and withdraw his name from consideration to be the permanent secretary. Trump announced the news about an hour after USA TODAY published an account of family domestic violence.

As a result, six months after Mattis resigned and amid rapidly escalating tensions with Iran, the Defense Department still has no permanent chief. As of Thursday, the Pentagon did not even have a candidate to be the boss, though Army Secretary Mark Esper is stepping in for Shanahan.

Shanahan was never charged with any wrongdoing, and a stronger candidate for the Pentagon post might have survived had he been able to candidly explain what happened to the satisfaction of senators. But the former Boeing executive had no military service, foreign policy experience or reservoir of goodwill to draw upon.

The most obvious concerns here are why these things are just coming to light now. In 2017, before taking over the job of acting secretary, Shanahan was confirmed as deputy secretary of Defense. The violent incidents — which involved a physical altercation with his then-wife (for which she was arrested), and one between his son and that former wife — were not publicly divulged at the time.

This time, senators were wondering what was taking the FBI so long when they read in USA TODAY and other news outlets about the incidents in Shanahan’s past, some of which were described in hundreds of pages of publicly available divorce records.

Beyond the questionable vetting is the broader issue of this administration’s failure to get and keep good help. The Defense Department was one of the few agencies in capable hands under Mattis, a former Marine Corps general who resigned in December in frustration over Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and the president's undermining of the network of alliances at the heart of U.S security. Since then, at a time of rising global threats, the department has lacked a leader for a record duration.

Although Trump promised to stock his administration with the best people, 62 of his nominees have taken themselves out of consideration or seen their nominations withdrawn, according to the Partnership for Public Service — twice the casualty rate at the same point in Barack Obama's presidency.

Trump sees the presidency as a platform for stoking his own ego and making others bend to his will. But the U.S. government is far too big and complex not to have competent people in senior positions. The vacancies at the Pentagon and other vital agencies are creating a dangerous void.

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