19 December 2018 — 0559 mst
Ryan Zinke’s departure as Sec DOI is no suprise —
his replacement may less flamboyant but no greener
Ryan Zinke never should have been Secretary of the Interior. A congressman just elected to a second term, and a former one-term state senator, whose knowledge of public lands issues was thin, he was hired because he struck up a friendly relationship with President Trump’s son, Donald, Jr., a hunter. Zinke leveraged that into an appointment to the cabinet. Both Donalds liked Zinke’s cocksure, swashbuckling,can do Navy SEAL style. He was perfect for casting as a reality show Sec DOI.
As far as I can tell, Zinke didn’t model himself after former Sec DOIs such as Harold Ickes, Stewart Udall, or Bruce Babbitt. Nor has he become this administration’s Albert Fall. The closest parallel may be James Watt, although Watt always seemed more home at the country club than home on the range.
Zinke was a liability from the gitgo precisely because he was a Navy SEAL. As former Bush 43 speechwriter David Frum observes in Trumpocracy:
Military men, like people trained to any demanding specialty, acquire certain habits of mind, certain ways of looking at the world. Within a well-functioning administration, this perspective is enriching; within an administration like Donald Trump’s, it can be supremely dangerous.
High among those dangers is impatience with law. Military people are selected, trained, and promoted to get results. There are no wrong ways to win a battle, after all. Procedures and protocols are all very well in their way, but to the military mind they never can be, and never should be, ends in themselves. Nobody should want to change that outlook! But that outlook, good in its place, must always be balanced in a republic of laws by the lawyer’s insistence on the supremacy of legality
The most wrenching post-Watergate scandal — Iran-Contra — was the work of three military men who refused to heed this insistence: John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane, and Oliver North. Unlike the Watergate burglars, these men aimed only at the public good as they understood it. To the extent that the trammels of the law impeded them, they sliced through them as so much irritating and unnecessary red tape.
Under a president who despises law even more than the most impatient general, a general’s instincts become even more dangerous to him, to the government, and to the nation.
Because of Zinke’s experiences and temperament, he’s not the kind of man who should be placed at the top of any civilian organization. President Trump failed to recognize that.
Who will run DOI after Zinke? Most likely someone far less colorful — but equally pro oil and gas and mineral development, and far more skilled in the bureaucratic arts necessary to execute Trump’s agenda. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt’s successor is Andrew Wheeler. Reports the Huffington Post’s Alexander Kaufman:
Wheeler’s ascension, while expected to return stability to the scandal-struck EPA, demonstrates how the administration secured the future of its radical plan to dismantle the nation’s leading public health agency at the behest of the industries it regulates, amid the distractions of Pruitt’s humiliating final months as the agency’s second-shortest-serving administrator in history.
“He will be potentially considerably more effective, both because you don’t have the daily drama that you’ve had for the last several months and because Andy knows how the system works,” said Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy EPA administrator who spent 39 years at the agency. “He could be more effective for the administration in achieving its policy objectives.”
We’ll hear more about Zinke long after he’s gone as Sec DOI. He’ll be the subject of numerous inquiries. Will he run for governor of Montana? That’s a possibility, but I suspect his popularity under the Big Sky is not as great as when he joined Trump’s cabinet. He’s older, and his reputation has stooped under the weight of the baggage he’s accumulated. I suspect he’ll end up with a series of jobs in the defense industry, and not spend much time in Montana outside of ceremonially drawing beers at the Double Tap Inn. His political career has tapped out. I wish him well in his return to private life.