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I'm not saying that Trump is bad. (In fact, I think he's more good than bad. Not perfect, but no one is.) I feel like I'm catching friendly fire from someone I agree with. I feel a bit indignant, actually, that you think that I am another 'Trump bad' commentator. I demand an apology!
...regardless, it is my observation that American politicians are big on the performative aspects of politics. It's not enough to merely engage in policy-making: one must make the pious noises of Righteous Rule and kneel to the appropriate deities, which necessitates ideological belief in policy making. In our case, the dogmas are the liberal consensus of the post-war period - and, more recently, the progressive elite culture.
I don't think there's a reason to be overtly cynical about their anger when Trump breaks those mores and disowns those beliefs. One can be self-serving and outraged at the same time.
Trump, I think, has no strong ideology, no more than the CEO of Ford has an ideology when it comes to making cars. He has protectionist beliefs and populist instincts but is readily swayable by anyone with the patience. His political product is himself, for better or for worse. So when a subordinate fucks up, his political movement can go 'if only the Tsar knew!' and he can smoothly purge a disobedient follower without fear of ideological contradiction. This process has happened many times before. Elon is a very prominent example, but no one on his cabinet is safe. I suspect he'll go through more advisors before his term is over.
This is very much not what the Biden administration was like, where the cabinet ministers stayed on permanently no matter how terribly they did because they were the ones really in charge. The difference between top-down and bottom-up leadership. On the Democratic side, the president is merely a figurehead executing on the advice of his well-credentialed advisors. On the Republican side, the president is a emperor whose favor his advisors must pursue.
long exhale
Which, to get back to the point, Trump doesn't care about individual policies not working because to him, it is a manner of changing the people responsible. Democrats do care - because the people responsible are all executing the same policy, no matter who they are! There is nothing inherently offensive about EIF's statement here. It is easier to change personnel then it is to change ideologies. Chadface, YES, this is a good thing. QED.
For structural and cultural reasons, there is no distinction between a King and a CEO in the American system, so mayors, governors and presidential hopefuls need to demonstrate their ability to do both. A British Prime Minister needs to do a lot less performing because the royals take on most of the performance burden of making the country look and feel like a country. And we have similar institutions at local levels - the traditional British (Lord) Mayor has largely ceremonial and representative functions while the leader of the majority group on the council is making policy, setting budgets etc.
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I wouldn't go quite so far as to call the actual Democratic position that a president is a figurehead only, Obama was quite muscular at times, but a generalized respect for process and credentials and expertise is certainly baked in to the pie in a way Republicans have never 100% believed, being slightly more individualistic where Democrats can be a little collectivist (within their subgroups at least - the party at large less so). The Republican version of expertise looks more like "good instincts" than it does "studied it for years", but they still do believe in expertise broadly speaking, just in a different form, and with fewer criteria. Think 'successful maverick CEO' as opposed to 'tenured PhD technocrat'. A CEO still needs to have a good business, but how they got there is less critical.
Trump thinks, and arguably always has if you look at his past, that it actually doesn't matter if you have a good business. People just need to think that you have a good business, and then they assume you have expertise to back it up. 80% of the result with 20% of the effort. Now that's business!
He projects this attitude on his subordinates. Some of them even believe it. You don't need to actually kick all illegals out of the country. You just need to be loud about it, and make liberals sufficiently apoplectic, and everyone will assume it's working. You don't need to actually find a cure for autism, you just need to say you did. You don't need to actually save the government money, you just need to drum up some exaggerated numbers and declare victory. Mission Accomplished. It's 1984-lite. And then the ultimate trick? If later it becomes evident the action wasn't real, fire someone, blame them, replace them, quickly distract the public with something else new and outrageous and ambitious-sounding and then you can even repeat the cycle later. In that sense, anyone other than him is replaceable, and Trump never has any motivation to actually grill a subordinate about their actual plan, because it doesn't matter. The goal is reputation, respect.
What's new about this? Internally, most presidents do actually grill their subordinates about their plans. I listened and read a number of the Nixon tapes, we can literally see the day to day stuff going on inside the White House. He's very regularly giving specific instructions to diplomats, maneuvering legislation, getting Vietnam updates. Trump? He watches TV. I'm really not joking, it's a common thread in virtually every account. If he sees TV complain about a policy, then he calls up a cabinet member and grills them - about the TV coverage. I happen to think that it's not only backwards, but historically unusual.
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