The Trouble With Trump's White House Is Donald Trump
STINK FROM THE HEAD
The Trouble With Trump’s White House Is Donald Trump
If Bannon is cut loose, the old Washington adage of ‘better to have your enemy inside the tent pissing out’ will come into play.
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It took Donald Trump 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to buy himself one day of kind coverage at the end of another otherwise terrible week. But what the president himself described as an impulsive reaction to heartrending photos of Syrian children gassed by Assad on his watch isn’t a coherent strategy to punish Assad for using chemical weapons.Even supporters who hoped the strike would show Trump as a he-man leader willing to grasp the saber of state in his tiny hands and rattle it firmly, it failed to paper over the political crisis consuming his White House as his staff and family have become warring factions seeking his favor so that the story has become not about the president’s goals, policies, or accomplishments, but a group of people around him who make the Borgias look like the Brady Bunch.
Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn. The cancer in the presidency isn’t his staff—though they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that. Let’s start with the leader of the Pepe Army sleeper cell at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Steve Bannon. If Trump keeps his chief strategist, he keeps the poisonous, post-conservative nationalism and thinly-veiled racial and religious animus that helped put him in the Oval Office. Bannon was great at running a conspiracy blog, but his political instincts are those of an arsonist, not a strategist. He has led Trump into a series of unforced political debacles, tainted relations with Congress, and alienated members of America’s new royal family.
He’s already become persona non grata in Congress for his absurdly villainous performance trying unsuccessfully to browbeat them into accepting the ludicrously unpopular Trumpcare bill, and his economic nationalism is big-government statism wrapped in populist trade and industrial policies. Bannon is a famous brawler, and like many brawlers after too many beers, he lashes out any anyone for lookin’ at him funny. A Bannon power center in the White House is as dangerous as its vacuum. If he fires Bannon, Trump should prepare for war. The information warfare architecture Bannon built with the money of Robert and Rebekah Mercer is already restive and nervous that Trump has been co-opted by (((them))) and lured into being a more conventional president. Since the Trumpbart/Bannon/Mercer propaganda platform helped elect Trump with its lurid “reporting” and its troll army (shoutout to Putin!), it can just easily be turned against him. Trump’s social media power was always boosted by—if not contingent upon—this system, and the idea of a vengeful Bannon turning those tools against him should keep Donald awake at night.
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What about Jared Kushner, the new golden child of the Celebrity White House? Elevating his son-in-law to Ambassador Plenipotentiary for Everything and Czar of All U.S. Government Programs is already straining credulity. Other than an accident of marriage and birth, Kushner isn’t regarded as particularly shining intellect, a masterful leader, or a man of any particularly notable ideological standards. He’s the son of a New York billionaire married to Trump’s daughter, and that’s really about all he brings to the table. Teacher’s pet types emerge in every organization. The leader will take a shine to a person of particular talent or ability, and elevate them faster than the norm. It’s one thing when that person actually has talent and ability. In that case, other team members will see it with grumbling admiration, even if they don’t like it. In Kushner’s case, accomplished, smart people who have managed more than their daddy’s real-estate company will look at him as being elevated on the basis of his marriage, not his ability. Kushner already has so many titles, assignments, and projects that it would be impossible for even an experienced manager and leader with a staff of hundreds to manage them. He’s never managed projects even close to the scale of what Trump has ladled onto his plate, and it’s going to show. The death will be from a thousand tiny cuts, but politically fatal in the end. In addition, Trump requires Kushner’s presence so frequently that I’m surprised Jared doesn’t have a cot outside Donald’s bedroom door.
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As long as Trump is president, there will never be a pivot. There is no better version of Trump, simply waiting for the right org chart or the right staffer.I’m always struck with how a simple phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson captures politics over time, and how it captures the Trump administration perfectly. That phrase? “An institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.” The shambolic adhocracy of his White House is a perfect reflection of Trump’s own chaotic, disordered thought process and lack of mental discipline, and that’s not changing any time soon.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/10/the-trouble-with-trump-s-white-house-is-donald-trump.html
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