Re: POTUS Elect Trump II: Lefties whining and regurgitating fake news
Carson is a ludicrous choice for HUD however he does have administrative experience. IINM he was head of Pediatrics at Hopkins, which I believe entails the sort of glad handing and budget management typical of higher levels of administration. It's possible he was a demographic hood ornament useful for fund raising. It's possible they kicked him upstairs after whatever awful thing that has made him a sort of ambulatory vegetable made it unthinkable for him to continue to cut into people. But he did occupy that post.
I think what we'll see with the Trump cabinet, as opposed to the cabinet of someone like Obama, is the difference between a proactive and reactive cabinet.
A guy like Obama is going to go in and appoint a bureaucrat who has worked with public housing probably since he got out of college. He may even be one of the top two or three guys in HUD right now. This person will have a very specific idea of what HUD can do, maybe should do, or maybe should not do. That, coupled with whatever the President's own agenda is on public housing, will become the agenda for public housing programs during the term. It might be something like a shift from multi-family public housing facilities to single family public housing facilities, or whatever. But whatever it is, it's going to be an attempt to change HUD from what it is today into something different, slight or otherwise, in a way the administration figures is better.
Carson isn't going to have an agenda for HUD. I'm not sure he even knows where the office is located. I can't imagine Trump has an agenda for HUD, unless there is a way to make a buck off it.
So instead, Carson will take the position with a directive to his staff like "carry on", then collect his paycheck. If something goes comes up, or goes wrong, they'll then have to figure out what to do.
But I can't imagine that Trump and Carson sat down and had a conversation that included questions like, "what is your vision for public housing in the next four years?"