Cat herding is a good term for a political chief executive: Mayor, School Board President, Governor or President. While there is some inherent power in any of those jobs, the truly great ones know that their job is to both lead and persuade. The councilman for the fifth ward isn't going to go along with the mayor's desires just because the mayor want it. The mayor has to build either a consensus or a movement. That takes work.
The ones who are good at it are those know know this to their bones. A president can order the army about, but the congress can cut funding for that.Getting elected is not a carte blanche.
The problem is intensified with business guys who become political executives. They are used to a world where what they command eventually happens. It's worse for those who come from family or private corporations, for they have never had to answer to anybody.
This is why Trump is failing. He seems to be unable to comprehend that his desires, expressed on Twitter, count for almost nothing. Just because Trump wants it doesn't always mean that it will happen. He can go see his Potemkin plaque all he wants. He needs to build a consensus in order to do anything not easily reversible, and right now, he is congenitally incapable of doing that.
(It's actually worse for Trump. He craves flattery and approval like a drowning victim craves air. He is a thin-skinned bully, able to dish out insults, but unable to take them.)It's early yet, but one of the governors elected last year, a rich guy named Ned Lamont, is also a former executive with no real political experience, other than serving as a one-term selectman in one of the richest towns in the nation. His opponent was Bob Stefanowski, another rich guy with zero experience in politics. So the Nutmeg State voters had a choice between two tools who know jack.shit about government. It's almost guaranteed to turn out badly, unless Lamont is a quick study. I'm betting against that.
And as for the "resignation" of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, color me "uncaring". Whomsoever Trump chooses to nominate will likely be some lacky who understands that Job #1 is fluffing the ego of Der Mar-a-Lagoführer. Mich McConnell would confirm a sack of putrid horsemeat for the job if Trump so nominated. So there is little point in caring, unless the nominee is a certain balding, goose-stepping, piss-poor excuse for a human being.
Molly Ivins once said (about Ross Perot and Clayton Williams) that guys who have made a lot of money in business have a really hard time working in a system of checks and balances, and I would go further and say that applies even more so to hard-core narcissists like our current president, who may or may not have done the actual "made a lot of money" part.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
There’s nobody in the West Wing who is as smart as Molly Ivans was.
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