'The Fifth Risk' Paints A Portrait Of A Government Led By The Uninterested

Brian Naylor, wbur.org/npr

Image from The New York Times

The thought that Donald Trump may have been totally unprepared to become president in November 2016 is one that's not new to those who have been following the day-to-day crises and dramas of the Trump White House closely.

But a case for this argument is revealingly and startlingly made by Michael Lewis in his fascinating — and at times harrowing — new book The Fifth Risk. ...

[T]he Trump administration is still lacking some important components. According to a tally kept by the Partnership For Public Service and The Washington Post, of some 700 key positions in government, slightly more than half have been filled.

Many vacancies have nominees awaiting Senate confirmation, and as of this writing, 153 of these key posts have no nominees whatsoever. For instance at the State Department, unfilled positions include what would seem like some pretty important jobs for the agency running the nation's diplomatic efforts. There's no chief financial officer or undersecretary for public diplomacy, [JB emphasis] no coordinator for threat reduction programs — and in the foreign service, there are vacancies at U.S. embassies in Ireland, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, Pakistan and Turkey, to name a few. ...