Don’t Do It: Why Moving Tom Cotton to the CIA Is a Bad Idea
– By Fred Barnes (weeklystandard.com) / Dec 11 2017
A job shuffle that would put Senator Tom Cotton in charge of the CIA is one of the worst ideas to come out of the Trump administration.
It’s not that Cotton couldn’t handle things at the intelligence agency. That’s not the problem. It’s what would be lost on Capitol Hill if Cotton, 40, leaves the Senate. He’s only been there for three years but he’s already a critical player.
Who came up with the proposal to use the Trump tax reform bill to kill ObamaCare’s mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance? (A two-fer that also allows for a bigger cut in taxes.)
Who wants to kill “blue slips” so a single Democrat can’t block confirmation of Trump’s judicial nominees? Whose letter to Iran’s mullahs, endorsed by 46 Senate colleagues, warned that a nuclear arms agreement not ratified by the Senate wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on?
The answer is Cotton. And I could go on. So I will. Who is the senator closer to Trump than Cotton is? My guess is nobody, though no one refers to Cotton as Trumpian. Cotton was even part of the group that met in March 2016 with Trump and agreed on a plan to nominate conservative Supreme Court justices.
Justice Neil Gorsuch is the result.
Cotton pushes. He’s out front. The Almanac of American Politics says he has an “unapologetically bold approach.” He’s a team player but willing to rebel against Republicans when they act like mushy moderates. When some conservatives backed criminal justice reform to reduce the prison population, Cotton wasn’t an ally. “If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem,” he said.
How would the job shuffle play out? It would ease Rex Tillerson out as secretary of State, replace him with Mike Pompeo, the current CIA director, and bring Cotton aboard as the intelligence agency’s new boss.
I’ll concede this two-cushion shot sounds sensible and might appeal to Trump. Only it shouldn’t. Trump relies on his instincts.
They got him to the White House. Since he’s balked at the shuffle so far, I suspect his instincts are telling him something. I hope he interprets them wisely.
For one thing, while CIA directors aren’t a dime-a-dozen, the president wouldn’t have difficulty finding a good one. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton would be a smart choice.
Last but not least, there’s the presidency to consider. Cotton is seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, if Trump doesn’t seek reelection. (I have no inside information on his plans.)
In any case, it’s the Senate that offers a path to the White House.
The CIA doesn’t. It’s the black hole of Washington, a place where bright futures die. Some may think it was key to George H. W. Bush’s election. But they’re wrong.
PB/TK – Why are GOP’ers acting like DEM’ers by pushing Junior Senators into the limelight of a POTUS contender without actually doing anything in their short stint as they bitched the DEMs did with Obama? Cotton, Rubio, Cruz are quick to be named but there’s one thing all 3 have in common, they’ve all been ‘fluffed’ by FOX’s Hannity many times over
