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Trump: Our First MBO Presidency
I’ll admit I get irked at times by Bill, Jonah, Charles, Kevin (you know who you are) along with others who still can’t seem to get their heads around Donald Trump, President. They are perpetually indignant over the President’s tweets and want to read utmost conviction into every single thing the Donald says. I find this amazing.
Unfortunate for these conservative pundits, they just can’t understand Donald Trump. Sure, they are used to dog whistle politics, quiet subterfuge, crocodile tears, grandstanding, legal word parsing, pretend ceremony, fake deference and duplicitous words. However, they believe that they can see through all this political interference and determine the truth. Except they can’t. They just know, from years of watching Washington politics, who believes what no matter what they say or how they say it. The fibs, outright lies, exaggerations and political legerdemain are still at play in Washington. But Donald Trump, he stymies them. What is he saying? What is that supposed to mean? They are lost. President Trump has them, well, trumped.
I’ve worked closely with a few powerful CEOs in my life. Most were like Donald, energetic, fun to be around, and quite willing to believe and say just about anything with obvious conviction to make a serious point or promote their venture. I was there to encourage them to paint their pictures within the lines; that is to not get too far ahead or away from reality. More than once, during an analyst meeting or in a meeting with investors, I had to interject, carefully, to pull some of the hotter hyperbole, back to earth.
These men are promoters. They are there to seal the deal, promote the company and move along the strategy. They are not securities law experts or even as intimate with the financial details of their own operations as they should be. They want to be the biggest, the best, the most successful and the most profitable. They live for superlatives and set extremely high goals. If you aim high enough, they believe, even if you fall short, you will still out jump the competition.
Politicians are not like that. Their motives are polluted with the retention of power. They are more clever than they are wise. They are as much concerned with making their political adversaries look bad as they are with governing. Political strategy is not about value or efficiency, it is about constituencies and votes. Politicians are actually considering ways to slow down automation and tax it. If that is not the best differentiator when considering the perverse motives of politics, then there are none.
Donald Trump has no appreciation for this kind of retail politics. He’s a business guy, through and through, our first management by objectives CEO, the MBO President. What does he want? Control over our borders. It’s part of his job description and he’s determined to achieve it. And he wants the world to take our leadership seriously. He wants to reverse the diminution of our military. He wants fair trade deals. He wants a simplified tax code with lower rates. He wants elections unblemished by voter fraud. He wants our multinationals to repatriate their profits from overseas. He wants free, open and vibrant health insurance and health care markets. He wants a judiciary that considers constitutional intent, not precedent, first when judging our laws. That’s about it.
OK, he did say he wanted to improve our infrastructure, however just how this would be achieved or funded was never addressed. I can only assume that this goal is on the back burner for now.
What is missing from this agenda? Two big conservative bugaboos: deficits and entitlements. Trump steered clear of these elephants. My take is this: if we tackle the stated goals above maybe then we can find the courage and wherewithal to tackle entitlements and deficits. Much depends on economic growth and the reciprocal growth in government receipts.
President Donald Trump is not an eloquent man. He’s a businessman. He doesn’t filter his words through ideology. His ideology is reflected in the goals and objectives he sets for himself and his administration. The idea is simple: move the country to a new place in the following ways, 1, 2, 3, 4… You can count them on your fingers and toes. If there are some things you don’t like, OK, oppose them. Trump is ready for practical as well as ideological arguments. If you are in the minority, you still have a chance. I direct you to the Freedom Caucus and the first attempt at Obamacare reform.
Back to Kevin, Jonah, Charles and Bill, don’t dismiss our president as un-serious just because he is abrupt or speaks awkwardly. Unlike politicians, President Trump is more wise than he is clever. Measure him by his objectives and how successful he is in achieving them. At the end of his four years, we will all give him his big HR review. It will be simple. If he’s been successful and wants the job, we’ll hire him for another four years. If he’s not, we’ll all move on. That’s the way MBO works.
Published in Politics
Here’s something to consider: not only was our government built to be clunky, difficult, diluted and limited, it was also designed to be regularly purged. Why? To shake things up, to keep it fresh, to force accountability. A new president faces an overwhelming learning curve and immense organizational inertia. Of course, President’s get elected by making bold and naive promises; Trump made his promises. Sanders and Hillary made theirs (free college, college loan forgiveness, free healthcare, etc.) The bigger and bolder the promises, the more difficult the path. In the meantime, every Republican president since Nixon can expect irrational opposition from the Democrats and the press. My point is, Trump laid out his plan as I described in this essay. He may have over-reached. That does not presume that the country is rejecting this strategic direction and wants to move toward more free stuff, just that Trump could not deliver as promised. Who wins in this scenario? The opposition and the captive press. Who loses? Republicans, all of them, even the never-Trumpers.
I agree with you, but it can’t be crazy for the sake of crazy. It has to be crazy with a purpose. I’ve been looking for the purpose and I’m just not seeing it.
Oh, we are back to that, are we? “Don’t agree with me, you must want the Democrats to win!” It’s an argument my 12 year old would make. It’s nonsense. If you do not think that the first year of this Presidency will have an effect on the mid-terms, then you are fooling yourself. If he is successful, that will help. But if we get to December and there has been no meaningful tax reform, no repeal of Obamacare, and no traction on a handful of things, the middle-of-the-roaders will say “Why the hell did we vote for these guys?” They will have forgotten about the SCOTUS pick, if they ever cared about it. This is just analysis, not wishful thinking.
Sorry—@DougKimball…MBO is not exculpatory when this POTUS is so very uninformed and/or misinformed and/or flat-out incurious, compounded by a stunning lack of discipline AND ANYTHING approaching wisdom! That there seems to be no one to “pull hotter hyperbole back…” seems sadly obvious. His Tweets are simply nuts when they’re not juvenile. Ricochet is also a great forum for the establishment Republicans and Conservatives and the #NeverTrumpers and the #Trumpkins but, like Sean Hannity, The Donny’s defenders would be a lot more appreciated if every once in a long while they found something Trump said or did or Tweeted that WAS beyond defensible—and said so.
His selection of Gorsuch may prove to be his greatest success but like a broken clock being right twice a day, that may not be saying much.
I’ve told pissed off bosses on a few occasions that if they think they can find somebody better for the job they should replace me. It had the desired effect. They had to think about the entire package instead of just the specific thing they were angry about at that moment.
I like this comment, but remember to try and refrain of all caps.
And I’m saying your analysis is based upon previous events and experiences that may not be applicable at this stage in history. Let’s keep in mind two things: 1. Donald Trump is the first president in history to not have had either elected, appointed, or military office. 2. The Trump/Pence ticket is the first winning GOP ticket since 1928 to have not had either Richard Nixon or a member of the Bush family on it.
Compare this to Dems who have now put themselves in a position in which they’re defending the previous 24-28 years as the natural order of things.
I was very fond of W. I think he was disciplined and when I wrote this essay, I was aware that his presidency was once called the first MBO presidency for the reasons you describe, especially his Harvard MBA. He was blessed with his father’s Washington contacts and experience and like Trump, he entered office with a congressional majority. Also, like Trump, he struggled out of the gate as he learned that bold objectives often run into a hostile press and minority. He reformed Medicare, but didn’t cure it. He abandoned entitlement reform. In many ways, 9-11 revived him. But with the terror war, domestic issues were sidelined. His administration attempted address of the housing bubble but the Democrat then majority blocked these efforts, citing (what else, discrimination and social justice arguments) and federal dollars continued to flow into housing debt. Everyone failed to see the threat that mortgage finance (Fannie, Freddy, the Fed, mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps) represented in the stability of the world’s financial institutions. The bubble broke, people defaulted, housing prices crashed and surprise, everyone realized that the collateral underlying trillions in private debt, was bad.
W’s presidency would never be the same after that.
I tend to believe W’s administration’s handling of Katrina did much greater damage to his image of competent managerial conservatism than anything involving the financial crisis. In fact, history is going to be much more positive of the passage of TARP than of Katrina.
Nope. Until January 2021, “Not Hillary” continues to be a valid criteria. If Hillary was there, we’d be marching determinedly into the gray ooze of leftist totalitarianism.
Even if Trump is a total screw-up who spins in circles and accomplishes nothing, at least he’s not driving us maniacally in the wrong direction.
“If Hillary was there…”
Hillary won’t be there – that’s the point. Whatever happens from here until the end of time, Hillary will not be elected President in November 2016. That outcome has been averted. Continuing to game out that scenario is a completely pointless exercise because, besides being a tacit admission that he’s not doing a great job, the choice has been made and the course set.
The only possible outcomes now are: Terrible President, Great President, or somewhere in between.
Well then, for heaven’s sake, give the man a chance. He’s been in office slightly less than four months. As a non politician he’s bound to make some mistakes, but at this early stage of his presidency, with all the Dems determined to see him fail, he needs our support. There was a great deal of Republican criticism against Obama, but the Dems supported him in lockstep and enabled him to change the direction of the country. Trump’s trying to undo a lot of that and he needs the backing of his party.
That isn’t what you said at all. You said, and I paraphrase, “Don’t agree with Trump? You must want Hillary to win.”
Now, your other points are interesting, if not enlightening. I am not altogether sure how those two tidbits of information have any impact on what will happen at the midterms. Are people going to say “Well, he ain’t Hillary, and he ain’t Nixon. And dadburnit, he ain’t a Bush, neither! I’ll keep voting Republican!”
We need some equivalent of Godwin’s law regarding Hillary Clinton. Sort of, “If you have to resort to saying, ‘But Hillary would have been worse,’ you’re admitting you can’t defend Trump.”
As my crazy sister in law likes to say: “bull frickin’ too!” (that means, “I’m sorry, but I vehemently disagree with you on this.”)
I posted something similar to this on Facebook earlier and one of my so-called friends told me I was “unhinged.”
Frankly, Donald John Trump is more than capable of taking care of himself.
So let me ask you this: Do you believe that the last 24-28 years of political practice is such a superior, or even optimal, way of doing political business that it must be preserved, protected, and defended at all costs? Because I’m getting the impression that your…irritation with Donald Trump is leading you to believe in silly stuff like “the natural order of things.”
I voted for Trump. Because he was not Hillary. I thought it was important, and I am glad I voted that way, and thankful Hillary lost.
While this is all true, it is a ridiculously low bar, and Hillary will not matter in 2018 or 2020.
You’re more than welcome to disagree. You’re still wrong.
Has anybody ever been noticed by being hinged?
Where did Spin state he didn’t like trump because he wasn’t following the “natural order of things”? Also where has the “disrupter” trump even “changed” the alleged “last 24-28 years of political practice”? Has the need for donors changed? Are special interests somehow weaker? Was the means by which the President elected changed? Are there more senators now than there were in 2016?
trump has changed nothing about how the system works. If anything during the campaign season he prided himself on being one who uses it to his advantage. Why would he change that which benefited him?
You are wrong about two things: the argument being valid, and me being wrong. Because I am clearly in the right, here.
Trump is a New Yorker, born and bred. As one from Boston, that has a certain meaning; loud, thin skinned, more than willing to get in the face of opposition, rude, arrogant, with a tell it like it is and I can do anything attitude. NY is no place for wusses. For all of this braggadocio, there is truth. New York is a hard place, hard to love, but people from there love it, love their Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Knicks, Jets, Giants; they love their city for all its faults; it is still the iconic Big City. Boston and NY are like rival siblings; more alike than they wish to admit and competitive to the point of reflexive hatred. We understand each other. Likewise, we find New Yorkers to be obnoxious, loud and arrogant. Yet, one has to put natural hatred aside and accept them as the loyal, honest, sometimes refreshing rectal orifices that they are. They are good to have on your side in a pinch. You may even learn to love them.
Nah, forget I said that. Go Red Sox, Pats, Bruins, Celtics!
Two responses:
First, your question makes no sense. One can make an analysis of how the electorate works in response to the actions of the current president. One can make that analysis and predictions based on the last 24-28 years of political practice without making a judgement call on whether it is good or bad. You are free to tell me I’m wrong, and why. But the reason I am wrong, if I am, is not that I want whatever it is you think I want. But I’ll answer you this way: I think the federal government, in terms of scope and cost, should be 20% the size it is now, if not smaller. The nation is and has been headed in the exact opposite direction. Trump might slow that train down.
Second, I’m not really all that irritated with Trump. I’m happy with his SCOTUS appointment, as I’ve said a bajillion times. but I think Trump is exactly who I thought he was going to be. I’m not surprised by him in the slightest. What I am surprised by, and what I continue to be irritated by, are conservatives who can brook absolutely no criticism of Trump without resorting to quasi- and even full-on personal attacks. I’ve been called a liberal, a snowflake, an idiot, my sanity has been questioned. Just for the cardinal sin of level the slightest criticism at the man. You yourself are now making some assumption about what I believe in or don’t, and calling it “silly stuff like the natural order of things.” I don’t even know what the hell that means, let alone do I believe in it.
Fair enough…
I would take all of that and enjoy it, if it came with even a hint of know how.
Trump may never succeed in achieving his objectives. You can blame him if you like, but he has a pretty steep mountain to climb. He may not be prepared or suited to the task. He’s had the final say for much of his professional life and running a company you own is hardly the same as changing the direction of the country. He is not exactly surrounded with people willing to negotiate and compromise. In fact, many, some from his own party, oppose him and his initiatives out of spite. If they can’t vote against something, they’ll arrange for a sympathetic court challenge or they’ll rely on the press to twist the facts or change the subject. Quite frankly, I’m impressed with what has been accomplished thus far. Even Mitt Romney would have had to face a pretty stiff breeze from starboard and a lee shore populated with an opposition already bent on building a gallows. The problem is, getting elected is the easy part. I didn’t see anyone in those primary debates whom I could definitively say would have put together a better team than Trump nor a single one who may have achieved more at this point.
Looks like I picked the wrong thread to come back to Ricochet.
May not?