The Swiss Cheese Presidency: Why Trump’s Inability to Fill Key Positions Makes America Weak

Those observing the Trump White House, in Washington and around the world, have been puzzling over the administration’s staffing gaps. The slow pace of appointments to key posts across the national security bureaucracy has been mystifying, fueling all manner of speculation about what’s going on. Is this the lingering aftermath of an unexpected and haphazard transition, the result of massive infighting, evidence of simple incompetence, or an elaborate scheme to destroy the “administrative state”?

It is probably some combination of all of the above. Yet regardless of the cause, there are many reasons to be worried that, two months in, so many key national security and foreign policy positions still remain vacant. At the State and Defense departments, only two people have been nominated for Senate-confirmed policy positions below the Cabinet secretary level — and those two were nominated on Thursday.