The president-elect is assembling a who’s who of conservatives for his cabinet.

In the seven days since Thanksgiving, President-elect Trump has named the respected schools reformer Betsy DeVos from Michigan as Secretary of Education. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a committed reformer of ObamaCare, is Secretary of Health and Human Services. Elaine Chao, who was George W. Bush’s reformist Labor Secretary for eight years, is the new Secretary of Transportation. Two businessmen will enter the cabinet. Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin is Treasury Secretary and Wilbur Ross, an investor in distressed industries, will be Commerce Secretary.

Retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, one of the most able officers to serve in Iraq and later head of the U.S. Central Command, is within a hair of being Secretary of Defense.

Going deeper into the policy weeds, Mr. Trump selected Indiana Medicaid reformer Seema Verma to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. The main Supreme Court adviser visiting Trump Tower has been Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Bob Woodson, one of this generation’s smartest and most productive black conservatives, has been in to discuss with Mr. Trump how to make good on his campaign promise to champion the inner cities. If instead of these individuals, the visitors to Trump Tower had been the alt-right activists of so many progressive night sweats, it would have been reported across the New York Times’ front page and on CNN round the clock, as if Godzilla and Mothra were trundling up Fifth Avenue. Instead, the Trump transition has been talking to and appointing some of the most accomplished and serious individuals in Republican and conservative politics. Donald Trump isn’t pulling rabbits out of a hat. Somebody at team Trump has a first-rate Rolodex.

This Trump transition operation is filled with specialists and veterans extending back to Ronald Reagan’s transition, such as Ed Meese. While New York conducts auditions for the cabinet’s speaking parts, the Washington policy shop is now recruiting the under-, deputy- and assistant secretaryships. I’m told calls are arriving from solid people in the private sector who want to work on the Trump project, without pay, and then get out. That is the private-to-public expertise model created by Gov. Mitch Daniels in Indiana and followed by Govs. John Kasich in Ohio and Bill Haslam in Tennessee.

f Mr. Trump’s foreign-policy goal is to “kill ISIS,” it would be hard to design a more effective partnership than Jim Mattis at Defense and David Petraeus at State. They know what to do and how to do it, but that’s not the most important thing. As former commanders in Iraq, Gens. Mattis and Petraeus have seen enough sacrifice from American troops in the Middle East for two lifetimes. These are men who will not argue for committing ground troops unless the U.S. is going to win and then secure the durability of its dear investment there. As for Kellyanne Conway’s supposed anti-Romney rampage Sunday morning, I’m more inclined to see it as Thomas Cromwell going on television to explain the requirements of loyalty to Henry VIII’s associates.

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