Kevin Drum remarks on President Trump’s big skill:
The ability of Donald Trump to drive the news media is spectacular. Every newspaper is leading with Trump’s call to arm teachers, and in the Washington Post Philip Bump even goes so far as to figure out how much that would cost (about $1 billion). I don’t blame Bump for doing this—it’s the kind of thing I’d do, after all—but it’s insane nevertheless. We’re not going to hand out Glocks to third-grade teachers. Most teachers don’t want to be armed. And having lots of guns around schools is pretty much begging for trouble anyway.
Mostly, though, it’s insane. We’re not going to arm teachers. Trump knows it. The NRA knows it. It’s just a random tarball tossed out to distract attention from the obvious problem. And it works.
Some might argue that this is a bit of Trump’s genius – holding off the critics by throwing another shiny ball in the air. To me, though, it’s just another symbol of his incompetency. By gum, Presidents are supposed to lead, to find a path out of nation-sized problems. From Lincoln to FDR to Truman to even, yes, Reagan’s push to end the Cold War, those were Presidents facing nation-sized problems who led the way to solve them, whether they were recessions, wars, or even epidemics.
Trump hasn’t a clue because he has never been in charge of anything that wouldn’t line his pockets.
The ambition of a businessman is not the same as the ambition of a politician. The former is in it, to borrow a thought from my friend Mike Finley, for the everlasting warfare with your peer companies, to rise up the company ladder until you’re the CEO, your income multiplying until it’s ridiculous.
Politicians come in two groups, often interwoven, which is those who are in it as public service, such as perhaps Humphrey, and certainly many state legislators, and the second group, those who seek fame and prestige as statesmen. Overwhelming avarice is incompatible with the ambition to be a statesman.
And that’s why Trump is doomed to be a failure. We expect him to get out there and lead, and that’s why he draws the minute attention that he does – we want to see good, nation-sized ideas, government management competency, and an emotional center that the majority of us can tap into. The critiques which offend him so are, in truth, his chance to improve his performance by understanding how others see him. Instead, he takes offense and we end up with leadership designed (when designed at all) to increase the profitability of the corporate world. It’s all very small-minded.
I don’t foresee him improving from the admittedly premature judgment of him as a President noted here. He’ll be at the bottom of the pile for as long as we keep records, I fear. And I don’t celebrate that. I grieve it.
