>We had to deal with his whacky Dad in Michigan and I do empathize with Massachusetts.
My off the cuff analogy might be; how you might feel about the whole Governor Brown thing in California.

– Bottom line with DJT; he gets to pick anyone he wants. I really shouldn’t expect he would choose people that I like, although I reserve my right to back-seat drive.

How about maybe considering someone like Darryl Glenn? He needs a job. And I tend to think he would rise to the occasion.

https://electdarrylglenn.com/meet-darryl/

(Priebus refused to help him out with RNC money in his election bid.)

The VA is already a statist operation, by design, so Romney couldn’t make it much more so. After his Romneycare fiasco, there is a chance that he would like the “voucher” idea that is kicking around. Finally, the head of the VA is not heard from when things are going well; he is invisible, and no one cares who he is (without looking it up, do you remember the name of the current one?). Unless Romney messes up, putting him there would be more likely to have him seem to go away than many other possible positions that he might end up in, including working in private enterprise.

One major obstacle I think the Trump team is facing, above & beyond “politics,” is that they were late to start compiling lists of potential candidates for 3,500+ appointed positions.
–You have to delegate that sort of HR task and it’s a lot of work, and open to politicization.

We’ll have a much better picture of the global direction Trump is going in the next 8 months.
Same with the Dems and Big Media.

total tangent-
–excellent discussion on generic & Patent pharmaceutical’s in the other thread a week ago.

Wayne, my formative years in management gave me an approach of ignoring personal likes and dislikes and putting people in the job where they could put their talents to best use, whether I liked them or not.

I was in positions where serious overhaul was needed, and if I fired somebody I had no means of getting a replacement, so I had to work with what I had (or in extreme cases just get rid of somebody toxic and redistribute the workload). Often, as a problem child took responsibility and matured, I found I disliked his less.

Perhaps that’s been a blind spot of mine the past 10 years as I’ve worked as a supervisor in the private sector and have more options than I used to.

Romney annoys me, but from what little I know about him, I get the impression he’s a great turnaround artist. Despite the pathetic attempts to paint him as a high school bully, a dog abuser, and a purveyor of “binders full of woman,” I think he has a lot of integrity, good intentions, and a sense of fairness.

I don’t see him as a good candidate for Secretary of State; I’d be more comfortable with him executing policy rather than making it, and the VA seems like a challenge he could really sink his teeth into, if given the right tools.

LocalFluff–
You continue to enjoy this all, way-too-much. (but I can’t say I blame you one bit & I’m sympathetic to your Flair!)
:)
Not be a lefty thought-police-guy, but I must draw the line with making fun of Mormon attire, Romney has plenty of other loser “accomplishment’s” for which we should rightly MOCK him openly & mercilessly! (within the bounds of civil-discourse, of course.)

>When it comes to mocking Scientology… Go for it. I’ll help you.

I’m not as convinced DJT is as Machiavellian as you might suspect. But, we shall see… I worry more about his underlings & the entrenched mid-level Apparatchik’s that actually make the Federal Leviathan function.
(Unlike Europeans, we American’s have historically distrusted our central Federal Government, and indeed, all Politician’s in general, at all levels. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, “American has no native born criminal class, except for Congress.”

Tangentially–can you relate DJT to any of the Shakespeare stories?
(I’m drawing a blank today….)

@Garry
Don’t worry about Romney. It is just about humiliating him:
Trump: “- I very much like your merits for secretary of state, Mitty. But as you well know, the unity of the party and loyalty are very important to me. How do you manage those issues now? I’d really really like to have you as my secretary of state, that was my assumption when I went down that escalator a year and a half ago. Believe me. Do you remember when you were ready to get down on your knees for me when I supported your failed campaign against Romney four years ago? You need to get back into that mindset again.”

And the Mitt will cry as he in his magic underwear regrets that he bet on the dead horse, and therefor never will have any kind of relevance in politics again.

Ideally, I’d like Trump to overhaul the VA, and use that as a template to loosen employment rules across the whole government and clean house. Without changing the rules for hiring, firing, promoting, and demoting bureaucrats, the swamp is going to remain largely undrained. I think the VA is the best place to start, because it has the dirtiest laundry.

I’m not sure what to make of Trump reportedly not working on the VA appointment; I’m hoping that what he and Romney are talking about.