Trump's trademark line in The Apprentice was "You're fired."
He liked saying it. The public liked hearing it. He was the can-do, decisive leader.
What a disappointment to be elected a mere president.
Trump thought the president had employees. Not really. Federal workers are employees of the federal government.
Take a few seconds to click on the YouTube link. Trump practiced saying this line off-screen, so he would get it right for his brand. Sometimes he pointed his finger. His face had a look of accusation and judgment.
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| https://youtu.be/crmvHJpCkfM |
Democrats worry that Trump is forever changing the balance of power between the presidency and the Congress. That is a risk, especially now that a president has immunity from prosecution for his acts as president. But my sense is that the current shift in power away from Congress is situational. The president is popular with his MAGA base. Those voters intimidate GOP legislators to do what Trump asks, and they are a majority in both legislative chambers. They are letting Trump be high-handed. This isn't a revolution or power shift. It is democracy. When the public tires of Trump, Republicans -- and therefore Congress -- will reclaim power.
The real revolution in our form of government is with the president's relationship to the employees in the federal government. Trump discovered to his dismay that a great many of them have a mind of their own. His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, obeyed third-party standards of justice on recusal, and therefore frustrated Trump, who wanted to stop an investigation into Russian involvement in Trump's campaign. The second AG, Bill Barr, was loyal to Trump up until Trump really needed him, which was to assert along with Trump that the Justice Department believed the 2020 election was stolen. Barr said it wasn't. Trump's own chiefs of staff said "no" to him. His appointees at the Defense Department said "no." Up and down the federal bureaucracy, people followed the law, tradition, or science -- not Trump. Even the National Weather Service embarrassed him, refusing to change a hurricane prediction. Then, in election year 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci and the CDC acted on their own authority as epidemiologists, frustrating Trump's narrative.
Federal employees fit a pattern that coincides with right-wing, anti-intellectual populism. Federal departments are led by subject-matter experts: foresters, lawyers, physicians, nuclear engineers, epidemiologists, meteorologists, computer engineers, economists, statisticians, and career military officers. Trump led MAGA voters to be very skeptical of experts. The financial crisis of 2008 sparked skepticism of expertise. Covid accelerated it. Trump converted this skepticism into votes.
Most federal employees, especially those in leadership, are "career" people, with loyalty to their professions and its standards of behavior. They aren't political. They are professional.
This is a moment of shock and awe. The Trump/DOGE blast emails tell employees that the non-political, merit-based Civil Service era is over. Under the theory of the unitary executive, the president is responsible for how laws are enforced, down to the lowest person in the chain of command. The way to send that message is with blunt force. Firing all new hires and new promotions is essentially random -- like firing everyone with a last name beginning with the letters A through E, or by closing whole departments in a single day, locking up a building with work half-done on desks. BAM! People see it: Trump is the boss and your job depends on him, personally. If he says "You're fired!" and for whatever random reason, then you are jobless.
Some people consider the federal bureaucracy is the fourth branch of government. Trump is taking it on, bringing us back two centuries to a Jacksonian notion of an administration, one that is openly partisan and directly connected to the popular will of the moment.
The public may want that -- at least for a while. The federal bureaucracy has a reputation for being rigid and impervious, lacking common sense or reasonableness. Trump is transactional. He helps his friends. He punishes his enemies. He is shaking up that bureaucracy, making it responsive to him. But there is a downside. The opposite of bureaucratic is subjective and idiosyncratic, i.e., cronyism and corruption.
Cronyism is closely associated with special-interest, oligarchic government, and Trump is openly cozy with oligarchs. A corrupt government led by oligarchs can be a stable form of government, although perhaps not with a people who are accustomed to democratic government. Corrupt cronyism may be the most enduring result of Trump's presidency.
People wanted someone who would shake things up. They knew Trump was an agent of chaos. Americans are getting what they voted for.
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8 comments:
“Federal departments are led by subject matter experts: foresters, lawyers, physicians, nuclear engineers, epidemiologists, meteorologists, computer engineers, economists, statisticians, and career military officers.”
Not anymore. The secretary of the interior is a businessman, politician and leading proponent of fossil fuels. The secretary of health and human services is an infamous anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist. The secretary of defense is a Fox “News” talking head. The secretary of education is about to be an ex-wrestling CEO. And the list goes on.
I was inprecise and therefore isleadig by the word "led". The Secretary is the poitical decoration on top of the agency. So is the second tier person. But the day to day of the organization leaders vare those career people. That is who leads. Ther are down a notch or two in DC and but they run things in Omaha and Atlanta and Cleveland and in the pickup truck laying out the boundaries of a grazing lease in the field. They used to be way beyond political influence. That may be different now. At least that person is running a calculation in his head: What would get me fired?
According to a Washington Post report, candidates for federal law enforcement, intelligence and national security positions are asked if the 2020 election was “stolen” and whether the Jan. 6 insurrection was an “inside job.” In other words, loyalty to Trump is more important than knowledge or expertise, and I expect this will spread throughout other departments in the next four years.
Obviously, there has to be a balance between bureaucratic and functional. Things got way too bureaucratic, and a political force against it developed.
That force is going to shift things (quite possibly too far) away from bureaucratic. And eventually, due to whatever goes wrong in that configuration, another political force will develop.
And so it goes…
HEGEL: TRUTH EMERGES FROM ERROR
Speaking of truth, a quote for our time:
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
---Martin Luther King, Jr.
You guys (MT and Peter) discuss the dialectic and Hegel. Our President said, a while back, "I love the uneducated." It seems clear our President must not love you two.
Between the educated and the uneducated, we arrive at a propitious synthesis. Right? Hopefully.
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