The unprecedented mass exodus of presidential appointees is no surprise. After all, the Donald made clear from the outset that he was prepared to go it alone. Remember that line from his Republican convention acceptance speech? “I alone can fix it,” he said. Trump is reportedly exhilarated by all the staff churn and turmoil. Those vanquished cabinet members and senior advisors were merely awkward stagehands, fools who got in his way and stole his scenes. They didn’t understand that this administration is a one-man show.
Donald Trump is absolutely certain that he doesn’t need a merry band of experts telling him how to run this country. As he likes to remind us, President 45 has a power greater than any font of knowledge, an unassailable force guaranteed to lead us to greatness: his instincts. “I rely on myself very much,” he once said. “I just think you have to have an instinct and you go with it.”
A Google search of “Trump instincts” turns up more than 800,000 entries. He points to a passage in a book he wrote in 1999 about Osama Bin Laden being a “shadowy figure,” as evidence of an “instinct” that predicted the 2001 terrorist attacks. He told Bloomberg News that he did no research on immigration but made the issue a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign because he “. . . just knew instinctively that our borders are a mess.” The New York Times reported this week that Trump has told confidants that he’d rather rely on his superior instinct than on advice from his cabinet.
This is, of course, a gigantic load of bunk. Instinct is not a mysterious psychic power. It is a byproduct of our experience, offering a conscious assessment based on patterns instantly detected, and subconsciously based on stored memory. An MIT report suggests a person needs at least 10 years of “domain specific experience” in order to make good instinctive decisions. That means Trump may have a well-honed instinct for real estate transactions, but that power hardly transfers to dealing with Congress or a North Korean dictator.
The president has an alliterative confusion over two approaches to decision making. His is impulse, not instinct. Instinct aligns a pending decision with rhythms drawn from a deep well of experience. Impulse is utterly without cognition and is driven by a lust for immediate pleasure. Trump’s “stable genius” mind is not performing a rapid review of past experiences in search of a pattern that would trigger an instinct. He simply acts on a child-like impulse to say or do whatever he believes makes him look the best in that particular moment, with zero regard for what that choice may reap for him in a future moment.
If the events of the past couple weeks had unfolded in any other administration, it would be meaningful to ask these questions: What’s the strategic game plan behind Trump’s decision to meet with Kim Jong Un? How does a new Secretary of State affect the administration’s approach to diplomacy? Will threats to impose tariffs on South Korea and Japan have an impact on seeking the denuclearization of North Korea? Where is the White House headed on gun control, or relief for young DACA-covered immigrants?
Yet, those and similar questions are predicated on a foundation of deep thought and serious contemplation that is totally foreign to this president. Unless you’re talking about trying to keep a porn star quiet, this is a White House free of strategic planning.
Instead, Trump:
SHOCKED every foreign diplomat and his own advisors by agreeing on the spot to meet with the North Korean dictator, and then rushed to the White House pressroom to alert the media he so despises that a big announcement was about to be made. The Donald’s narrative was that his hard line on Kim has brought the tyrant to his knees, all without a clue as to where to go from there.
INSISTED, days after the Florida school shooting, that now is the time to challenge the NRA and enact meaningful gun control legislation. After basking in self-adoration for such courage, he reversed course and retreated to the NRA party-line.
TOOK at least 14 different positions on protection for the Dreamers, young immigrants who grew up in America, all based on who talked to him last, and/or on the audience he was trying to please at the time.
ANNOUNCED stiff new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, saying “trade wars are good”, just after his Treasury Secretary reassured allies that “We’re not looking to get into trade wars.”
In his bizarrely quixotic campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump repeatedly complained about how all of his predecessors were so weak that other countries were “laughing at us”. Only he, alone, could win America’s respect back, or so the campaign line went. Well, that’s not happening anytime soon. Trump, and his make-every-moment-all-about-me operating system, has heads shaking all over the globe. As one South Korean newspaper editorial recently noted, “His style of governing, marked by disconnectedness and arrogance, is just mind-blowing.”
The trajectory of this presidency keeps heading for new lows every day. We are long past the point of writing off his fumbles to a mere lack of experience. Like a monster in a bad science fiction movie, Trump grows worse and more out of control with the passage of time. Rather than sensing his inadequacies and failings, and seeking guidance from those with expertise and experience, the president seems almost emboldened by an incompetency he can’t or won’t see.
If a beloved family member had that level of disconnect from reality, we’d be looking for a well-staffed protective care place for them. Unfortunately, the “family” in this case is a congressional Republican majority pathologically adverse to dealing with this delusional head of household, unless and until he gets much worse. Sadly, that time will come. Let us pray that this country is still intact when it does.
“Impulse not instinct” is the key point, I think. Another terrific piece, Bruce.
Scary stuff but not understated. Our great nation is facing the unthinkable. God help us.