Ever since news of President-elect Trump’s more unorthodox appointments was leaked, debates have raged over whether his nominees are “qualified” for the roles for which they’ve been selected.
When President Trump chose Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, protests immediately began that he is nothing more than a “Fox News Host” who should be dismissed as unserious. Matt Gaetz had to forego his nomination for Attorney General not just because of his controversial past but because he lacks experience directly practicing law.
When it comes to Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, and the rest, our august senators will surely provide their judicious advice and consent—setting aside all personal grievances and factional concerns. (I know, I know…but c’mon, give them a chance.)
The whole debate, though, rests on faulty premises. Before asking whether Trump’s picks are “serious” or “qualified,” we should consider that our governing class may have a warped view of what counts as “qualified” and what “serious” means.
This is not to say all credentials are useless markers. Recently, Peter Thiel—who has offered cash to smart individuals to drop out of college—commented on the relatively elite university credentials of President Trump and J.D. Vance compared to Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and even Gavin Newsom. When asked to square the paradox, he said, “I can believe they’re corrupt and rotten, and find it amazing that the Democrats no longer believe in them.” He explained, rightly, that anyone who can pass through so-called elite institutions and organizations while maintaining or even strengthening their right-wing convictions should be celebrated.
By far the greater part of those who spend their careers in Washington, D.C.—those who move through the concatenation of universities and government agencies sometimes referred to as “The Blob”—are affected by assumptions they may not realize. They may profess all sorts of populist or democratic ideals in speeches and writings, but when it comes time to select personnel, they revert to unconscious notions of credibility that are not just useless but detrimental.
The common retort to Hegseth’s doubters has been that he went to Princeton and Harvard. This is tactically wise and a mark in his favor, as it softens the hearts of his elite naysayers. But a more honest retort would be that it would be far better if he had never been influenced by this wrong-headed thinking at all. His best qualities are not those shared by fellow travelers in elite circles, but those learned through years of rubbing shoulders with and getting feedback from the American people. His roles as an operator in the wars in the Middle East and a counter-elite television host who heard from all sorts of ordinary Americans are his qualifications, not his drawbacks. These experiences prepared him for truly democratic service far better than any liberal conditioning would have.
C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man about the corrupting influence of unconscious training: “It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which, ten years hence—its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious—will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.”
It is not a theory, but an assumption that a president elected on a populist mandate should choose elite-credentialed personnel to run his government. It is a controversy whether or not the president should select individuals who are best in-line with the agenda he ran on or select for the preferences of the party in D.C. But it is not recognized as a controversy: it is stated as a point of fact.
That deserves to be reconsidered, and we should all be grateful that our once and future president is forcing this conversation.
Parker Briden is Founder of The Buckhorn Group and a former Chief of Staff to Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi.
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