It is said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. It would be difficult to identify any particularly poetic moments during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, but the sentiment still applies: The idealistic rhetoric of any campaign is invariably overtaken by the gritty realities of running a country. That evolution has been evident in the short time since Donald Trump won the Nov. 8 ballot. A candidate committed to overturning the established order now appears to be working with it, backing away from his most incendiary comments while promising to stick to his core message of "draining the swamp." The result is considerable confusion about what President Trump will actually do.
Consistent with a campaign that was thinly staffed, riven by infighting and subject to frequent turnover, the Trump transition process has been messy. His transition team was first headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie but he was replaced shortly after the election victory by Vice President-elect Mike Pence — reportedly as a result of animus with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner; Christie sent Kushner's father to jail when he was a prosecutor — and it took time before paperwork was completed to allow Pence access to critical information. As a result, the new team had not begun to liaise with various bureaucracies, including the departments of state and defense, even as the president-elect began to talk to world leaders. After meeting President Barack Obama, Trump was reported to have been surprised that he had to replace all the staff at the White House.
Nevertheless, it took Trump less than a week to announce his first two appointments, selecting former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff and Steve Bannon, the chief strategist of his campaign, as White House counselor. From one important perspective, the two men could not be more dissimilar. Priebus is the consummate Washington insider, administrator of the Republican machine that candidate Trump was convinced had rigged the system against him and which he was determined to destroy. Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was president of Breitbart News, a website that is the key outlet for the "alt-right," a reactionary strand of hardline conservatism that rejects mainstream Republicanism. In other words, the two men occupy opposite ends of the GOP spectrum.