Its cabinetmaking season in Washington again. President-Elect Donald Trump has made his selections, and theyre all working their way through their confirmation hearings. The outcome, for virtually all of them, is not in doubt. Unless three Republican senators disapprove of a nominee to the point of voting against his or her confirmation, Trump will get the cabinet he desires. To the victor go the spoils, and all of that.Trumps cabinet is a mixed bunch, to state it as politely as possible. Some have a wealth of government experience to draw upon, some (like Trump) have none. Some seem to be sober and reasonable people, and some seem to be nothing short of bomb-throwers intent on an ideological goal. But the most interesting thing about them so far is the degree which they disagree with Donald Trump on certain issues (unless theyre just saying anything to get confirmed ' always a possibility). Its not exactly the classic team of rivals, but rather a team which may just contradict the president on basic viewpoints about reality (such as whether climate change is a Chinese hoax, for instance).How this is going to work out is anyones guess, at this point. It may be easier to predict how the individual cabinet members will act than to predict how President Trump is going to act (or react) on any particular issue. As Joe Biden recently commented, we all have no freakin idea of how Trumps going to set about the job of being president. Itll probably be shocking in many ways, but at this point itd be hard to be surprised by anything Trump does. His personal style is so erratic that anything is possible, really.The biggest question for the cabinet is going to be whether Trump takes a hands-on or a hands-off approach to all the executive departments. Will he be content to sit back and delegate just about everything to his departmental secretaries' Or will Trump be micromanaging their every effort' Again, nobody knows.The biggest danger to the cabinet members is if Trump switches between the two managerial styles without any warning. How would you feel if you had spent months implementing some policy agenda item only to have the rug yanked out from beneath all your efforts by a lone early-morning tweet from Trump' If Trump tweeted: Were not going to do that. Bad idea! then all your hard work would be for naught. This is not all that far-fetched a thing to contemplate (knowing Trump), but how will his cabinet members react, if this happens'The other danger for Trump cabinet members is more normal for any cabinet members. Reportedly, the first thing a new cabinet member is expected to do when taking office is to write out an undated letter of resignation and give it to the president. The president keeps all these on file, so that he can fire any of them at any time for any reason ' but without technically firing them. Whenever a cabinet member leaves, the announcement from the president always begins: I have accepted a letter of resignation from Secretary X.... This might just play out differently with President Trump (who, after all, would probably enjoy beginning his statement with: Today, I told Secretary Z : Youre fired!). But no matter how the process works, being a member of a presidential administration means, at times, voluntarily falling on your sword to politically protect the president. This is true for any administration, but Trump seems quicker than most to throw subordinates under the political bus, as it were. Any perceived failure of a Trump agenda item is never going to prompt President Trump to admit error, to put it another way. Instead, hell shift the blame and clean house. Its about the most predictable thing about Trumps presidency, in fact ' itll never be his fault, itll always be because somebody didnt do the job of making his vision into shining reality.Of course, this works both ways, although its normally quite rare to see it actually happen. Cabinet secretaries can step down on their own (whether Trump wants them to or not, in other words), and theres a pretty high likelihood that Trumps cabinet wont survive his first year in office intact. There could be a clash in viewpoints that is impossible to gloss over publicly. So many of them have contradicted Trump in their hearings that one of the areas of disagreement could become too fundamental to ignore ' such as if Trump actually did order that torture be revived as U.S. policy. There could be a clash of personalities as well, which wouldnt be too surprising considering how thin-skinned Trump has always been. A cabinet member deciding he or she had had enough wouldnt be all that big a surprise.The most likely scenario for a cabinet member suddenly resigning, though, is if Trump does undercut one of them in a major way (that early-morning tweet I previously mentioned). Months spent on implementing a policy wrecked by a before-breakfast tweet may result in a cabinet member resigning by the end of the day. Unless Donald Trump is forcibly separated from his access to Twitter, this seems entirely possible. This is why the chances are pretty high that Trumps first cabinet will lose at least one member during his first year in office.Then theres a scenario which is downright worrisome to contemplate. Trump sees the world in a certain way. Sometimes, his worldview simply does not match up with reality. Take a look at his campaign statements on the unemployment rate, to cite a prominent example. On all sorts of subjects, Trump just flat-out disagrees with numbers he doesnt like, because they dont reflect his own view of the situation. But with Trump in charge of the executive branch, hell be in charge of the departments which provide such data to the public. Normally, this wouldnt even be an issue. But with Trump, anything is possible. What happens when the unemployment rate goes up during Trumps presidency (again, this is but one example, substitute any economic indicator you like here)' Will Trump sit idly by while the economic figures get worse, or will he insist that these numbers are rigged and decide to meddle with them' After all, hell control the number-crunching departments which put out official government data. If reality conflicts with the Trumpist view of the situation, will Trump tell the number-crunchers to make the numbers look better than they are' This is a real possibility, and a real danger. Its easy to see a department head (perhaps at a lower level than the cabinet) very publicly resigning in protest over such a conflict.Theres one final danger for the incoming cabinet, one that has roots in presidential history. Will Trump even pay much attention to his cabinet' Or will he, instead, rely more on a kitchen cabinet of family members and other trusted advisors who dont actually serve on the official cabinet'The term was coined during Andrew Jacksons presidency (the kitchen cabinet was differentiated from the real cabinet, called the parlor cabinet). Jackson, like Trump, was the ultimate Washington outsider who rode a wave of seething populism into the White House. Once there, he relied on his adopted son Andrew Jackson Donelson and a group of men who had earned Jacksons trust ' including two newspaper editors (Amos Kendall and Frances Preston Blair, namesake owner of the Blair House, directly across from the White House). Jackson fought bitter battles with his official cabinet, and at one point dismissed them all (because ' you just cant make this stuff up ' their wives were snubbing one particular cabinet wife, in what was known as the Petticoat Affair). He is the only American president to have fired his whole cabinet, in fact.After Jackson, the kitchen cabinet term was used for other presidents, most notably in modern times for Ronald Reagan, who also had a group of close advisors he relied upon (sometimes to the exclusion of the actual cabinet).Donald Trump, pretty obviously, is going to have his own kitchen cabinet that the Senate will have no say in confirming. Several members of his family will form the core of Trumps kitchen cabinet, along with anyone else he decides is worth listening to. How much of a clash this sets up with the real cabinet remains to be seen. Trump famously makes up his mind depending on the last person he talked to, so if the real cabinet is undercut on a regular basis by the kitchen cabinet, it could prove to be incredibly frustrating for Trumps actual cabinet members. This is another dynamic that will bear watching, for sure.Since Trump is so unpredictable, its impossible to say how his cabinet will function. Until we see him actually govern, nobody has any idea how hell interact with his cabinet, or how effective theyll be (either on their own initiative or under Trumps close supervision). Will Donald Trumps cabinet work well with the new president' Or will it be a dysfunctional mess' Will he wage public battles with them over Twitter, or will he just leave them alone to do their jobs' Will Trump trash one of his own cabinet members in public, if they have a personality conflict' Will one (or more) of them decide their job is impossible, and walk out unexpectedly' Or will Trump call a hasty news conference to announce Youre fired' Will members of his own family have veto power over cabinet-level decisions, or will they remain behind the scenes as merely personal advisors' In this season of cabinetmaking, its easier to articulate the open questions than it is to predict any possible outcomes. But then that was probably a given, for a Donald Trump cabinet.Chris Weigant blogs at: Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. 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