The MBA Presidency

Fareed Zakaria has an op-ed about Trump as a failed manager. He makes the somewhat contested claim that Trump does a good job with the "bully pulpit" aspect of the job, noting that Trump gets his "message" across, even if that message is hateful and incoherent. Trump has failed to manage the crisis in the way other heads of government have.  (Zakaria makes the point that American presidents are actually Constitutionally weak offices, which largely gets ignored in our analysis and popular understanding of how government works.  But it's important to note that a functional Congress is essential to governing well and we have only had a functioning Congress for four years since 2006.)

The two aspects that Zakaria glides over is the essential role of the Republican "governing" philosophy in this catastrophe and the link to Trump's repeated failures as a businessman. As I've argued repeatedly, the GOP is essentially uninterested in the process of governing. This is why they are unable to pass a Covid Relief bill in the Senate. The hard work of trade-offs and compromises is simply incompatible with the way they operate.

Trump's failures as a businessman are well catalogued.  Trump is a guy who went bankrupt in America trying to sell Americans steaks, football and gambling.  He's a salesman whose only real product is the family name that he brands incessantly without actually doing any of the real managerial work that is required to build buildings. 

It's worth noting that George W. Bush was also an MBA graduate, and he, too, was an inept manager. He invaded two countries and then mismanaged both of them into failed state status. He let an American city drown. He exploded the national debt. He allowed the worst terrorist attack in our history to occur on his watch. He allowed his VP to establish a torture regime in violation of our laws and national values. He let a massive housing bubble build during his presidency that wrecked the global economy. Yes, he's not the open sewer of a human being that Trump is, but he was an awful, awful president.

There has been a strain in American politics going back to at least the 1920s of electing titans of industry to "run the country like a business."  What a wretched fucking idea that turned out to be.