Douthat is right that Trump could use a brain trust. But some of us were told that Pence or Reince Priebus or Paul Ryan would serve that role. Certainly they’ve tried. Moreover, there are countless policy agendas sitting on the shelf for Trump to choose among.
Why so much chaos, then? A common answer you hear from all corners is “the tweeting” — the horrible, horrible tweeting. But when you talk to people with more hands-on experience in, or with, the Trump White House, the better answer is that the tweeting is just a symptom.
Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.
In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character.
Yup. As I said throughout the campaign, Trump is terrible, she’s worse.
Nobody would hold up well under the 24/7 negative media barrage, and he gets it from both the liberal and the conservative press.
I’ve pretty much put it all on mute. I don’t trust them to report fairly anymore, and would rather be uninformed than misinformed. IOW, I’m one of the villagers who is no longer interested when the kid cries “wolf!”
The analysis of Trump hasn’t been right since the day he announced he was running and the media has been lying sacks of pooh since before Trump was born.
The fact that Trump was right about his enemies makes no dent in the incessant cacophony and people think his tweets are the problem?
The problem is Trump is real. His process involves others. So his final position isn’t his initial position. Which means he’s not the authoritarian he’s accused of being and gets no credit for that.
He needs to continue his big rallies because that’s where the people have the most influence on him.
Quiet by Susan Cain was a big eye-opener for me. Trump is the extrovert’s extrovert, particularly in one aspect where she writes that introverts build relationships through cooperation and extroverts build relationships through competition. I’m reminded of the contractor that Trump refused to pay, saying, “you’ll make it up on the next job”, and eventually took out a billboard coming into JFK saying that Trump owed her money. He paid her immediately, and I believe she reported that he thought it was funny and clever to do it. Almost everything I’ve read about Trump is more in keeping with this personality type, rather than some kind of idiot.
It would drive me crazy, but then, I don’t have to work with him.
It is somewhat more complicated than that.
The contractor “storyboarded” putting Mr. Trump’s fine haircut on a billboard outside Newark International, and Mr. Trump supposedly “fell for it” when the contractor demanded he pay up on prior invoices. After payment was made, the “deal” to decorate that billboard “fell through.”
“Ya’ got me, Sign Lady”.
Thanks. That’s exactly the article I was thinking of, obviously getting the ending pretty wrong.
The latest Syria thing has me worried.
If we get into an atomic war with Russia, what will have started the deadly escalation will have been those pictures of Syrian children breathing through a tube in the aftermath of a poison gas attack.
You cannot argue with images of dying kids. William Randolph Hearst a.k.a. Lester Holt is daring Mr. Trump to “do something decisive” about this, and Mr. Trump is falling into the trap. I mean the whole point of not voting for Ms. Clinton and putting up with the resulting farce in D.C. is seeing D.C. not burnt to the ground by fission-generated prompt radiation.
On the bright side, if there is such a thing, some Russian flak catcher is suggesting that Mr. Assad is expendable, if indeed he had broken bad. My opinion? Mr. Assad might be mean, but is he stoopid? What about Mr. Err-dough-whan? I don’t trust anyone that intimate with barnyard creatures.
“He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.”
Boy, I think that sums it up precisely.