Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump Cabinet flush with cash
His group of advisers will likely be the richest ever
WASHINGTON — President Dwight Eisenhower surrounded himself in the White House with such wealthy individuals that his Cabinet was mockingly referred to as “nine millionaires and a plumber.”
President-elect Donald Trump is about to do him one better.
Trump won the election by appealing to America’s disaffected working class, promising to drain the Washington swamp of insiders, and railing against segments of the financial elite. But the New York businessman has tapped a slate of people very much in his own vein to serve alongside him — billionaires and multimillionaires, including Wall Street financiers, industrialists and scions of the super-rich.
“Trump’s appointees will probably wind up being the most wealthy group of people who have served in a presidential Cabinet in history,” said Robert Spitzer, author of five books on American presidents and chairman of the political science department at State University of New York in Cortland.
Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, investor Wilbur Ross, is worth some $2.5 billion by Forbes’ account, and Ross’ likely deputy, Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, is in the billionaires club, too.
Betsy DeVos, selected to head the Department of Education, is a billionaire philanthropist whose husband is heir to the Amway fortune.
Banker and movie financier Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, and others who are key members of Trump’s transition team or in the running for still-unannounced Cabinet posts, including secretaries of state and energy, are by and large very well off.
Spitzer and other scholars note that there is nothing unusual about a president appointing rich people to top administration positions. President Barack Obama’s Cabinet includes Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, a billionaire businesswoman.
Eisenhower, a career military man who was not particularly wealthy, liked being around self-made people, and is regarded by historians as an effective commander in chief.
Trump stands to become the wealthiest person to occupy the Oval Office, with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $4.5 billion.
And just as his wealth was not an issue for his supporters, many of them don’t seem to mind that he is now tapping others from the super-rich club.
“I’m not surprised he’s appointing billionaires. He’s going to pick what he knows,” said Gayle Stafford, 49, a middle school teacher who lives in a suburb of Cincinnati and voted for Trump.
She acknowledged that Trump “talked about getting rid of that kind of thing,” but added, “I would hate to classify anyone who’s wealthy as someone who can’t get the job done.”
Of course, today’s economic times are different from Eisenhower’s, which launched a kind of golden age of broad-based prosperity when there seemed to be little downside to globalization and technology.
The recent decades of manufacturing decline, stagnant earnings and growing income inequality have hardened feelings that the nation’s richest 1 percent are out of touch with ordinary citizens and their needs.
“Part of the point of a diverse Cabinet, besides the PR value — a Cabinet that looks like America — is the diversity of views and experience it brings, shaping the advice the president gets,” said Andrew Rudalevige, professor of government at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
Referring to Martin Durkin, Eisenhower’s Labor secretary and former head of the plumbers union who was singled out in the old joke as the only non-millionaire, Rudalevige said, “Trump’s picks seem far more ideological. And no plumber yet.”
Stafford, though, said she was worried that DeVos may end up sapping public schools in a drive to promote school vouchers and charter schools.
“She is very wealthy . ... She’s sent her own kids to private schools,” said Stafford, who has 22 years of teaching experience at both public and private schools. “Is she going to give public schools a chance?”
During his campaign, Trump argued his own elite status and wealth actually made him more qualified to take on the establishment and change the rules that once served him.
But critics wonder whether Trump’s Cabinet choices will share that goal, or be tempted to skew policies toward the wealthy, not the working class.