I don’t think it has sunk in yet just how unpredictable virtually everything in Donald Trump’s administration is going to be.
To begin with, the incoming tweeter-in-chief has taken positions on both sides of many issues. Maybe he has thought through a number of policies and maybe he hasn’t, but either way we know almost nothing of his preferences beyond those that appear to be based on instinct (trade deals bad, Putin good).
And this is only the beginning.
Recent presidents have been fairly predictable because they were partisan. Their actions, including personnel choices, reflected the views of the majority coalition within their party. Even those White House staffers whom we think of as having close ties to the president (George Stephanopoulos for Bill Clinton, Karl Rove for George W. Bush, David Axelrod and David Plouffe for Barack Obama) had careers as Democratic or Republican campaign or governing professionals before their better-known connection was established. As such, they could be seen as partisan actors, not presidential loyalists, and were part of the process of constraining the president.
Trump’s White House is going to be different, but it’s hard to describe exactly how. From the evidence so far, the White House isn’t going to be like those in the 1960s and 1970s, when personal loyalists with weak (if any) party ties held important positions. The most notable example was under Richard Nixon, whose top two staffers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, were solely loyal to him.
By contrast, Trump’s White House staff is shaping up as surprisingly normal so far. You can’t get any more “party” than Reince Priebus, the outgoing Republican Party chair who will be, along with Steve Bannon, one of the new president’s top two advisers. Even Bannon has been at the extended fringes of the GOP network. Neither man has a long-term relationship with Trump. Neither was even part of his nomination campaign.
He’s still filling openings on the White House staff, but so far he is making choices typical of recent presidencies. For example, Stephen Miller, who will be senior policy adviser, worked for Republicans on Capitol Hill, then joined the Trump campaign in January 2016. Trump’s White House differs from George W. Bush’s mainly in the kinds of Republicans it is drawing from. What was once the fringe is now assuming a more central place within the party coalition. (Miller, for example, once worked for Michele Bachmann.)
Trump is also following normal patterns when it comes to those agencies within the “presidential branch” of government -- the executive office of the president. For example, his designee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, South Carolina Representative Mick Mulvaney, has been a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus.
So why should we be so uncertain about the results of these decisions and appointments?
For one thing, because he’s choosing from a different coalition within the Republican Party, it appears Trump will wind up with a staff with little or no White House experience. This was an enormous problem for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who ran the worst transitions among modern presidents. Poorly functioning White Houses cause uncertainty.