The Trump era is a perverse reworking of the old saw that in America anyone can grow up to be president. The expression speaks to the egalitarian ideal that in our democratic republic of the people, etc., anyone might lead it. Not that Donald J. Trump, idiot heir to Fred Trump’s fortune, began life as just anybody. He did prove you really don’t have to know what the hell you are doing to hold the job. Poorly, of course. But he’s held the job now for almost four years and a quarter million dead.
Even Sarah Palin might do it. Digby on Monday cited President Obama’s assessment of Palin:
“Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican Party — xenophobia, anti intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks — were finding their way to center stage. She had no idea what the hell she was talking about.”
By surrounding himself with the idiot sycophants he needed to feel like he is the smartest man in the room, Trump has “outed” a vast array of nincompoops in public office. It is something right out of Superman (1978):
Miss Teschmacher : Tell me something, Lex, why do so many people have to die for the crime of the century?
Lex Luthor : Why? You ask why? Why does the phone always ring when you’re in the bathtub?
[walking away]
Lex Luthor : *Why* is the most diabolical leader of our time surrounding himself with total nincompoops?
Anyone sufficiently appealing to Trump’s sense of himself finds a job in this confederacy of dunces in which bluster substitutes for competence. In the supposedly meritocratic world in which we supposedly live, one of the foremost things anyone should know is what they don’t know — the limits of their competence. In many professions, not knowing can get people killed.
Trump has no use for competence. Case in point: Dr. Scott Atlas. A neuroradiologist from Stanford’s Hoover Institution with no training in infectious diseases, Trump saw him on Fox News echoing his thoughts on the coronavirus, masks, and avoiding lockdowns to fight it. Trump assigned him to the White House coronavirus task force in August where, despite public denials, his advocacy of “herd immunity” and allowing the virus to spread (and Trump to ignore it) has contributed to the new wave of infections and death.
Atlas stirred additional controversy with a tweet on Sunday:
ABC News reports:
Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, is facing heavy criticism after telling Michiganders to “rise up” against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new COVID-19 restrictions imposed as new cases surge in the state.
Whitmer has denounced Atlas’ call to action, in a call with Michigan Capitol reporters Monday morning, slamming it as “incredibly reckless, considering everything that has happened, everything that is going on.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases, told NBC’s “Today” program Monday he “totally disagrees” with Atlas, and Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, called the comment “particularly irresponsible,” noting the death threats officials say Whitmer has faced.
“He is supposedly a physician and a disgrace to our profession,” Jha said in a tweet Sunday night.
Atlas denies he was teasing violence with his “rise up” comment. But he was not clever enough not to make it.
In the professional world, you can lose your license for practicing outside your area of expertise. In Trump’s White House that’s the reason they hire you … if only you’ll lick clean the president’s elevator shoes.
Atlas is hardly a one-off. Throughout his presidency, Trump has taken advice almost daily from Fox host Sean Hannity, a man with little expertise in anything except offering uniformed opinions. Then there are his GOP sycophants on Capitol Hill: Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louis Gohmert of Texas, etc. The list of incompetents is long and getting longer.
Republicans hope to add to it in the administration’s waning days, explains Catherine Rampell:
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as this week on Trump’s nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed. Simply put, Shelton is a demonstrably unqualified partisan quack who has no business working at the world’s most powerful central bank. Her nomination has been condemned by hundreds of economists and Fed alumni, including prominent Republicans and at least seven Nobel laureates. The senators poised to confirm her appear to know she is unfit; ahead of February hearings, a former Republican Senate Banking Committee aide said that “the idea of even calling her as a witness for something was beyond the pale” not long ago.
Shelton has advocated bringing back the gold standard. Her other positions on economic policy spin like a weathervane in the wind. Whatever the party’s political need du jour, she spins.
Senate Republicans have confirmed other unqualified cranks to senior Trump administration jobs — including to helm departments that nominees themselves earlier said shouldn’t exist. But both parties have long seen the Fed as too important to the domestic and global economies to politicize. A central bank requires political independence, real and perceived, to function, as events in Argentina and pre-euro Italy have amply demonstrated.
What Shelton’s nomination appears to be is “a desire to salt the earth for incoming President-elect Joe Biden.” As we know, Republicans who look the other way at government spending under GOP administrations become born-again deficit hawks once a Democrat occupies the Oval Office. Points for consistency in that anyway.
The competence gap in this administration reminds me of the exchange in Tom Clancy’s “Debt of Honor” I have quoted before. Serving in high government positions does not mean someone is smarter then you. Maybe not even as smart as you. They just have different jobs. What becomes dangerous is people accepting positions for which they are clearly unqualified for the money and prestige it brings, no matter the consequences to others. Some of those consequences are terminal.
But in an increasingly complex world, less complex people rebel at feeling left behind and powerless in it. Trump is their avatar.
“A man’s got to know his limitations,” Dirty Harry said in Magnum Force (1973). Too many in Trump’s orbit do not. Nor does Trump. Nor do any of them care.