The past conduct aside, Jackson was woefully unqualified for the job. He was a medical doctor and serving Navy officer, but had utterly no administrative skills. He was simply somebody Trump liked. The normal process of vetting a nominee and brainstorming with key Senators was completely ignore.
Conservative Republican columnist Jennifer Rubin lambasted Trump on Wednesday for nominating a clearly unqualified candidate (link here) in a piece with the title "The Jackson fiasco: A case study of Trump’s abject unfitness."
She made a number of spot-on observations:
Trump doesn’t know or care what top government officials do, so he has no sense of who can succeed.
Trump immediately blames others for his failings, as he did with the Jackson nomination.
Trump is all over the place in support for his own choices, sometimes backing them, other times tearing them down.
Trump is a coward and can't deliver bad news face to face. He couldn't cut Jackson loose and, instead, waffled all over the place.
Trump ruins those around him. Accepting a nomination has proved not to be an honor but, instead, a curse.
Rubin did not mention one fact that struck me in this whole fiasco. Trump fired the previous Secretary of Veterans Affairs, but he had no candidate or candidates waiting in the wings. Big mistake.
That's the mark of a really bad manager. But it's no surprise, really -- Trump has the worst management skills of any President since the scandal-plagued Warren G. Harding.
Harding was a much better President than Trump will ever be !
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