Rex Tillerson Needs a Reset

For the past seven months, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has submissively accepted the role of a second-tier cabinet official complicit in making his department a second-tier agency, embracing a 27 percent budget cut and leaving vacant dozens of vital positions. From climate change to Cuba, he lost a string of internal power struggles to Steve Bannon and his Breitbart sidekick, Sebastian Gorka. Now they’re gone. Can Tillerson engineer a reset of his own that quiets the calls for a “Rexit” from Foggy Bottom?

Tillerson can’t benefit from the addition by subtraction in the national security team without some addition of his own: recruiting, retaining, and relying on the foreign policy professionals to deploy regional strategies. He will also need to add some energy to his diplomacy.