Next up for Trump White House, Judge Jeanine and Lou Dobbs? Nothing should surprise us. It's the worst of times for anyone interested in honest, competent, efficient government. The next president faces a massive rebuilding project.

Jill Lawrence | USA TODAY

Remember when Al Gore smashed an ashtray with a hammer on the David Letterman Show? If you’re under 30, here’s a recap: The youthful vice president tried to explain the absurdly expensive way the Pentagon was ordering and testing ashtrays, which the agency called ash receivers: designed to ridiculous specifications, tested by someone in a certain type of safety goggles using a certain type of expensive hammer to smash it, and it failed the test if it broke into more than 35 pieces.

This was apparently how Gore, Bill Clinton and their wonk corps felt they could get the public interested in “reinventing government” — their project to make the government more efficient and less costly. They were neck-deep in the fine print, nerdy and numerical and easy to mock.

And how we should miss those days.

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The current reality-TV administration is unfolding unscripted in real time, with heroes, villains, hirings, firings and corkscrew policy turns, against a wallpaper of cable TV. And if there’s any connection to merit, skills, study, deliberation or expertise, any link to logic as we used to know it, it’s barely perceptible.

President Trump has tapped his White House doctor to be secretary of Veterans Affairs, after discussing the decision with his Mar-a-Lago friends. This followed a report that he discussed his decision on tariffs with Mar-a-Lago friends, which followed a report that he wanted his pilot to head the Federal Aviation Administration, which followed his hiring of favorite television personalities like Larry Kudlow and John Bolton for key jobs and, of course, his daughter and his son-in-law for whatever it is they do these days.

Next up, Attorney General Judge Jeanine (more macho than any guy, at least on TV), Housing Secretary Anthony Scaramucci (back on the call list and he lives in a house), and Education Secretary Corey Lewandowski (back in the dinner rotation and he went to school)? And how about installing the whole Fox & Friends crew at the White House vetting office, plus Lou Dobbs as chief of staff?

The Fox Business host is already participating by phone in Oval Office kibbitzing on trade and taxes. Why not have him handy in person? It’s not like Trump expects much of whoever succeeds retired Marine general and former Homeland Security secretary John Kelly. According to the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the president views a chief of staff as a “paper-pusher.”

This all might sound outrageous, but the real reasoning of President Anything Goes inspires about the same level of confidence. “He’s like central casting — like a Hollywood star,” Trump told an audience at Mar-a-Lago (where else?) about Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, his VA nominee. CNBC’s Kudlow is the new top White House economic adviser, even though — unlike Trump but very much like his ousted predecessor Gary Cohn — he’s a free trader. “The president likes me as a media communicator,” Kudlow explained. And as far back as 2015, asked by NBC where he got his military advice, Trump responded, “I watch the shows ... I like Bolton. I think he’s, you know, a tough cookie. He knows what he is talking about.”

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And that’s just topline personnel. There isn’t enough space in a column or even a book to describe the magnitude of the management mess and rebuilding project that awaits the next president, as ethics and legal lapses pile up, talent flees the government, positions go unfilled, and federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are pushed to thwart their own missions.

This is tremendously upsetting to Washington’s good-government nerds, who include me. In just the past few years I have published a book on successful congressional negotiations, helped edit a book on how to make digital government more efficient and responsive, and edited essays for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center on how presidents could succeed in their first year.

I recruited an op-ed from Elaine Kamarck (who ran the Clinton-Gore reinventing government project) on her 2016 book Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again. I also co-authored (with columnist Walter Shapiro) a 2014 study on how to improve House primaries and a 2015 study on governors and the presidency — why they make good candidates and whether their experience makes them better presidents (spectacularly mistimed, but its day could yet come).

We take this very seriously and the public should, too. Americans don’t always agree on goals or how to reach them, but it’s safe to say we all want a competent, professional and honest government that doesn’t waste our money.

Jimmy Carter once asked, in the title of his 1975 campaign biography, “Why not the best?” At this point the appropriate mantra is “please, not the worst.” Otherwise, the next president may have to invent government all over again from a mountain of wreckage.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock. Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence.