Pompeo is the Problem

U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has refused to permit five State Department “officers” to testify before a Congressional Committee. His refusal  explains much about why President Trump’s administration is a failure.

As reported in the Washington Post for October 2, 2019 by four Post reporters,

Pompeo characterized the effort to depose the officials as “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly, the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”

Saying Congress had no authority to compel such testimony, Pompeo wrote that he would “not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State.”

Secretary Pompeo began his career at West Point and served as a career officer achieving the rank of Captain. President Trump, lacking any experience in government nor knowledge of how to control the many career “officers” that manage government agencies, relies on the one important frame of reference from his youth learned at New York Military Academy.

Career military are “good.”

Unfortunately, career government officials do not make good political appointees.

Before becoming U.S. Secretary of State, Secretary Pompeo served as Director of the CIA and selected a career CIA officer as his successor. In other words, Pompeo doesn’t comprehend that career officers in the U.S. government must be controlled by political appointees whose lives are shaped by political experience and a political philosophy consistent with that of the President.

His language in his response to a Congressional oversight committee reeks of the ignorance of non-political appointees of the Trump Administration and, lest we forget, the deep doo-doo in which the President finds himself was caused by a career CIA “officer” who violated procedures and filed a Whistle-blower complaint.

The appropriate action for President Trump would be to replace CIA Director, Gina Haspel, and ask  Secretary Pompeo to resign.

Pompeo is the problem.