New Orleans For all the talk from conservatives about strangling the government in a bathtub and similar hyperboles, as well as the Elon Musk project to starve a lot of it to near death life-support level, the reality is that a competent and efficient government is critical in all countries, perhaps especially the United States. In the early Trump revenge tour, he’s been filling key jobs essential to the American people, as if he was stacking up a clown car at a circus or running casting for a reality show where men and women move to Washington, DC and try to work together to run the country, while the population cringes in fascination and horror.
It almost goes without saying that some of these projected appointees are completely unqualified to the positions they are being drafted to fill. Politics and ego being what they are, most seem to not miss a step in trying to grab the brass ring that they hope will put them in the big show, ready, able or not. Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Attorney General hardly lasted days before having to withdraw his name, unable to tamp down the Congressional investigative report and shoes dropping about his proclivity to seek out underage sexual escapades. In the ongoing, Floridification of Washington, Trump quickly inserted the former Florida Attorney General into the slot. The news has it that he’s also turning away from his nominee to run the Defense Department because of that nominee’s problem with a California rape charge and, get this, information that his mother has warned that he is dangerous around women. In Trump world, misogyny is alright, but maybe he’s willing to draw the line at out-right criminality, who knows? We’ll see soon.
Against this background, it’s hard for me not to salute the withdrawal of Trump’s nominee for head of the DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency. Chad Chronister, who is the sheriff of Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, pulled his name, “saying that as ‘the gravity of this very important responsibility set in,’ he had changed his mind about accepting the nomination.” He added the necessary words about having things he still needed to get done in Hillsborough and whatever else he needed to say to keep his current job, but this is one guy who came to grip with the fact that his eyes were bigger than his stomach, and did the right thing. The DEA runs investigations in 60 countries and given everything Trump has been saying, the job is becoming even more difficult in dealing with China and Mexico.
I want to say his is what a true American patriot does, but there also seems to be more to the story here than an experienced local lawman understanding the drug world is not just a Netflix special. Turns out there’s some baggage he’s carrying on the family side with a son sentenced to 22 months for a knife fight, and seemingly proud of it. Furthermore, he’s not really small town. He’s got deep family connections to Trump. “His father-in-law, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., has donated to Mr. Trump’s political campaigns and received a pardon from Mr. Trump in 2020. The pardon expunged Mr. DeBartolo’s guilty plea in 1998 stemming from an extortion plot connected to a riverboat casino license that a company he invested in was seeking in Louisiana.” The DeBartolo’s were originally from Ohio where for a longtime they ran one of the largest shopping mall empires in the country. Local 100 represented some of their workers in New Orleans during that period. Sports fans know DeBartolo from his stint as owner of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers during their glory days when they won five Super Bowls. Chronister also had some of the wingers biting at his heels because he enforced Covid restrictions during the pandemic, including arresting a pastor for breaking the rules.
Regardless, right thing for the wrong reason, or right thing for the right reason, I’ll take my hat off to him for bellying up the bar and admitting that the job was way too big for him and a mile outside his expertise. That’s the act of someone who knows something about government and cares about doing a good job, not just putting a feather in his cap.