As Steven covered last night, President-elect Trump has announced that he plans to nominate Pete Hegseth, a Fox News opinion program co-host, author, and Army National Guard officer as his Secretary of Defense. Our site founder, military veteran, and Professor at the Marine Corps University, James Joyner has some feelings on this nomination:
I could stretch his qualifications to say he was a reasonable pick for a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense position, but it would be hard. He’s not even remotely qualified for SECDEF.
Fellow veteran and later government intelligence worker @Andy agrees:
The only positive thing I can say is that at least he has actual combat deployments. At 44, he would just be a bit older than Rumsfeld, who has kept the crown as the youngest SECDEF in the history of the position, but he doesn’t have the resume Rumsfeld had.
Not a good pick.
We’ll get back to Hesgeth and credentials in a moment. First, I want to examine a statement the presumptive nominee has made indicating he intends to take on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (aka the dreaded DEI) in the military. From Reuters:
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked as his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and veteran who has expressed disdain for so-called “woke” policies of Pentagon leaders, opposed women in combat roles, and even questioned whether the top American general was in his position because of his skin color.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Hegseth could make good on Trump’s campaign promises to rid the U.S. military of generals who he accuses of pursuing progressive policies on diversity in the ranks that conservatives have rallied against
It could also set up a collision course between Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, a former fighter pilot with command experience in the Pacific and the Middle East, who Hegseth accused of “pursuing the radical positions of left-wing politicians.”
[…]
Hegseth also took aim at Joint Chiefs Chairman Brown in particular, asking whether he would have gotten the job if he were not Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt – which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” he wrote.
Let’s get something out of the way before continuing. Provided they meet the necessary Constitutional requirements, Presidents can pick whomever they want for Cabinet positions and other appointments. Hegseth and Trump’s other nominees appear to do that.
Whether those nominees are qualified to serve in their position isn’t a Constitutional question. It’s a matter of opinion tied to one’s definition of “qualified” and what the person doing the appointing is looking for. And in most cases, “qualified” comes down to more than any single factor. The problem is that many people get this idea of “qualified” tied up with our personal beliefs about meritocracy and the idea that there is a single “best person” for a given position.
This takes us back to Hegseth and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Comparing their two resumes, there is no question that Brown is more qualified regarding military matters than Hegseth. Hegseth’s record is… well, mediocre. Then we get to Hegseth’s record of managing large, complex institutions… which is nonexistent.
When it comes down to things, the only immediately obvious places where he appears to be near the “top of his class” are (a) being a Fox News Host (where, let’s face it, he’s mid) and (b) being a fighter for and a loyalist to Trump (here I’ll give him a nod and say he’s among the top).
Now granted I will admit he’s probably THE TOP person who fits those qualifications: of being a conservative news host who served in the military and is fiercely loyal to Trump. And I hope everyone notices that there is a lot of “I”–Identity (of the dreaded DEI)–built into creating that specific and narrow list of qualifications.
Again, it’s the President’s prerogative to select for those type of qualifications, but no one should pretend that picking the top person from the handful of people who fit a very, very, very narrow category is “meritocracy at work.”
For the record, many of Trump’s selections have been anything but meritocratic. Does anyone believe that Matt Gaetz is a meritocratic pick for Attorney General? Or Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Security? Are there no other people more qualified for those positions in all of the United States?
And yet, there will be people who will argue that all of these are meritocratic choices. Those same people will probably take Hegseth’s side when he chooses in his comments to reduce the choice of Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a single factor overwhelming factor: race.
To some degree, I understand the temptation to do that: unlike being in the military or being a TV personality, race is something that people (generally speaking) cannot choose to be. And knowing that something immutable, such as race, is being incorporated into a decision can feel uncomfortable.
We should also feel uncomfortable when reducing any hiring or nomination decision to just race (like Hegseth seems to be doing). The issue is in his phrasing: “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill?” is that “or”–i.e. setting up a binary where it has to be one “OR” the other. That “or” also has the added value of implying that anyone who isn’t white will never be qualified on the basis of “skill” because we can always ask that question of them.*
All that said, I suspect that there is a far larger pool of skilled candidates who happen to have that skin color (if it was a consideration) than the pool of *checks notes*: conservative news hosts who served in the military and are fiercely loyal to Trump.
Perhaps Trump has done us a favor because he’s demonstrating that–at least for him–these cabinet positions are not about meritocracy in any conventional sense. I hope we all keep that in mind the next time we are tempted to use terms like “DEI hire” to invalidate the skills and qualifications of people whose politics don’t align with ours.
* – Note that I haven’t seen the usual anti-DEI folks question the role that race, ethnicity, and gender played nominations of Marco Rubio or Tulsi Gabbard.
