Monday, November 28, 2016

Trump's Control Tower

Donald Trump's Press Secretary, err. I mean Campaign Manager, KellyAnn Conway, a woman credited with getting Trump essentially to shut up in the last 3-4 weeks of the campaign and talk only about jobs, has decided to call her boss's conduct of talking to Mitt Romney about a position in the administration, a "betrayal" of party faithful.

Now, given it's a "movement" of people who despise the establishment and Romney certainly s part of the monied elite, and further that it's a movement of people who hate any compromise, I'd say Conway's comments do reflect the feeling of the Trump faithful. 

However, Conway coming out and publicly criticizing Trump is professionally irresponsible.  I don't know if Conway is still employed by Trump but presumably she was headed for a position in his staff (at this point I'm guessing it's getting coffee).   She was "off the reservation" and Trump is reportedly livid.  But my question is, doesn't Trump have control of his staff?  His friend Rudy Giulliani can't shut up about getting the Secretary of State job and Trump can't make him.

Trump supposedly surrounds himself with excellent people (I mean look at Trump University), and talks about how smart he is and how tight a ship he runs but evidence is showing anything but.  He ran a campaign of baseless compliant and loose talk.  I think this will be the example for his campaign staff too.  Trump believes he is the only one who can speak out of turn, but as a leader you set a tone.  Conway's comments are something for which Trump is responsible.

The point is it seems pretty clear that Trump won't be in control of very much quite simply because he's not in control of himself.  He comes out and claims massive illegal voting occurred without any evidence, why does he think his staff won't operate the same way? 

There are many things which Trump does that are colossally stupid and which are worse than this.  He was able to keep a lid on his employees through the liberal use of lawsuits suing anyone who spoke out, but that doesn't work in government and won't work for him.  If fear is the way you control people, then when you aren't allowed to make them fearful, the hate you generate for your methods comes out.  Trump is a hands-off, uninvolved and uninformed super-delegator who gives out power to underlings who then in politics.... do what we have seen them do for years.. they fight among themselves until 1 or maybe 2 very powerful people run everything (like Dick Chenney).  That isn't going to be Steve Bannon, it could be Jarod Kushner (whom I don't remember anyone electing).  And whomever it is will have to contend with Trump running off the rails every other week or so because to Trump, no one controls him.

So, there won't be much in the way of control of staff or message in the administration for a while.  That's because the President-Elect doesn't practice it himself, doesn't want to control his staff (because that's too much work), and eventually we'll have someone step in to fill that power void.   It won't be Trump.  He won't be in control, not of his staff, and not of himself.

1 comment:

  1. There are still plenty of fractures in the political right, and they aren't going to go away any time soon. Rump's habit of pitting people against each other as a management style will exacerbate that problem, not resolve it.
    That he is selecting people for the spots around him who have the worst possible qualifications if they have any at all tells us what we have to look forward to as an epic fail.

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