Who’s in Charge: Trump’s Revolving Door

By DON ROLLINS

“A year and a half into his presidency, one has to ask if we’d be better off if we all agreed to have Trump do some ribbon-cutting, hold rallies for his rabid supporters and leave the governing to people who have some clue what they’re doing.” — Paul Waldman, Washington Post, July 2018

There was a time when the American public knew who was calling the shots inside the Trump administration. The alt-right Steve Bannon had for decades been pining for the day when he would have the ear of a malleable Republican president, so it was a dream come true when Trump appointed him chief strategist with little accountability save his boss’s polling numbers and infamous whims.

As with many appointees before and since, the rumpled Bannon was unceremoniously shown the door just months after his hiring; but not before he would permanently skew even further to the right Trump’s thinking on populism, nationalism and isolationism.

Sure, Bannon was Trump’s even grimmer Dick Cheney (often referred to as George W. Bush’s strategic Darth Vader) but for a moment there we at least knew who was running the store.

Bannon’s coming and going have since become the White House’s rule not exception. Indeed, once vetted and selected, all prudent new Trump advisers should begin planning for an inevitable, hasty return to the private sector think tanks, lobbying firms or law school teaching positions from whence many came.

Conservative devotees are quick to defend this revolving door approach by stating the constitutionally obviou,s but organizationally naive defense: appointees serve at the president’s pleasure, thus may be hired and fired at will.

The negative consequences wrought by these ceaseless, at points unlawful personnel moves are legion. Consider just a few:

● Whole agencies, departments and bureaus experience disorganization and mission drift each time one regime exits and another begins;

● Morale suffers after constant changes in leadership, especially among those with proven experience and institutional memory;

● Appointees with little to no experience are assigned key foreign posts, caught between the nuances of internationalist diplomacy and a nationalist White House;

● New appointees are tasked in advance with dismantling longstanding safeguards such as federal watchdogs and other nonpartisan overseers;

● Twenty-first century existential threats such as climate change and a deadly pandemic are often left to hardboiled science deniers;

● Trump surrogates routinely dismiss or discount issues of race, class, gender, gender identity and ableness, skirting any talk of systemic oppression.

The list of grievances against Trump’s capricious appointments and dismissals goes on. And on. Like the covid virus, it will take time, discipline and a change in administrations to even begin reversing the damage done by Trump’s penchant for repeatedly putting the wrong people in the wrong positions.

It’s not at all clear who’s really running the government these days. If we’ve learned nothing else since Trump took power, confusion is his default setting of choice. The only comfort for the rest of is, whomever that may be, will probably be pink-slipped by Labor Day.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2020

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