Expertise

 Krugman notes that the Trump Administration's floundering can be traced back to the willful rejection of expert opinion. Whether on tariffs, Iran, climate change and energy policy or diplomacy, Trumpist populism married to Trump's personal enthusiasm for corruption means that anyone who might actually know how to solve a problem will be sidelined and denigrated.

As Krugman admits, experts are not always right. Here's the thing. If I (a few years and several pounds ago) were to take 100 swings at a major league pitcher, I might be able to make contact a few times. That doesn't make me Tony Gwynn. Gwynn may fail 60% of the time, but he's still so much more capable than some schmuck like me. Same deal with expertise: you aren't guaranteed success, but your odds improve a LOT.

It also goes to the basic advantage of democracy - that again, Trump rejects. Democracy has the capacity to self-correct, because it receives feedback from the populace. Expertise in some ways is simply using a broad base of knowledge to understand feedback and predict consequences. "Hey, if we go to war with Iran, they could try and shut down the Straits of Hormuz and that would be really bad." People with a basic respect for expertise - not even of global markets and maritime law specifically - would listen. 

This is why people calling for a "Democratic Trump" as so misguided. There cannot be a populist figure like that in a party that still respects the concept of expertise. Trump's electoral strength is based on idiots who think "common sense solutions" is anything more than a bumpersticker. His failures as a governing figure stem from exactly what won him elections in the first place.

Again, Trump is the symptom, not the sole problem.