Hubris

 After claiming a mandate from his first-ever popular vote win — about half of Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016, when she lost — President-elect Donald Trump immediately went out and demonstrated his hubris, the 78-year-old Republican selecting people to lead the country’s most important institutions based largely on their personal loyalty and on-air presence. It’s a display of raw power and unchecked impulses, forcing senators in his own party to either praise their leader’s genius or risk his wrath on social media.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, is testing just how far (or low) Senate Republicans are willing to go in terms of their collective moral decline. A veteran of the Iraq war, Hegseth was plucked from the studios of Fox News to serve in the second Trump administration, which does not appear to mind that he has insulted women in the military and was flagged for possible extremist, white nationalist views while serving in the National Guard.

Hegseth has no experience that suggests he could lead a department with more than three million workers. The actual deal breaker, though, may be his sordid personal life.

-Charles R. Davis in Salon.com