It is an understatement to say the Trump administration is in disarray bordering on total chaos. Maybe it is by design. After all Trump selected Stephen Bannon, the former executive director of Breitbart News to be his Chief White House Strategist. As you probably know Breitbart is one of the right’s biggest purveyors of fake news and conspiracy theories, right alongside InfoWars.
Trump’s continually attacks on the credibility of legitimate media, his nominating individuals for key secretary positions who have zero experience or knowledge in the area they will be responsible for, and his slowness in filling necessary positions in the government are responsible for the disarray his administration finds itself.
Trump came into office promising to shake up the establishment, presumably an important rung in the ladder to Make America Great Again. Thriving on Chaos, a books by Tom Peters, must be the theory of business that Trump is adhering to as he attempts to run our sprawling federal government. The business of government is not the same as the business of profit driven organizations. Attempting to run the government as if it is will turn out poorly.
It should be pointed out in fairness to Tom Peters that Trump very likely does not understand Peter’s Thriving on Chaos to begin with.
Following is an opinion piece from The New York Times that further describes what we’ve stated above.
It’s with a whiff of desperation that President Trump insists these days that he’s the chief executive Washington needs, the decisive dealmaker who, as he said during the campaign, “alone can fix it.” What America has seen so far is an inept White House led by a celebrity apprentice.
This president did not inherit “a mess” from Barack Obama, as he likes to say, but a nation recovered from recession and with strong alliances abroad. Mr. Trump is well on his way to creating a mess of his own, weakening national security and even risking the delivery of basic government services. Most of the top thousand jobs in the administration remain vacant. Career public servants are clashing with inexperienced “beachhead” teams appointed by the White House to run federal agencies until permanent staff members arrive.
Mr. Trump lost his national security adviser this week in a scandal involving ties to Russian intelligence. Robert Harward, a retired vice admiral, refused the job on Thursday, rattled by a dysfunctional National Security Council and a president who has alienated Mexico, Australia and even the British royal family, while cozying up to Moscow.
… at this point in the Obama presidency, which did inherit a mess, Congress had passed laws aimed at dragging the economy back from the brink of depression while committing $800 billion in Recovery Act spending to projects ranging from housing to roads to advanced energy technologies.
Mr. Trump’s vaunted $1 trillion infrastructure spending program, by contrast, doesn’t yet exist, because the president confuses executive orders with achievements. Orders are dashed off without input from Congress and the government officials who would implement them. The White House is a toxic mix of ideology, inexperience and rivalries; insiders say tantrums are nearly as common as the spelling errors in the press office’s news releases. Steve Bannon writes the president’s script, and Reince Priebus, the embattled chief of staff, crashes meetings to which he has not been invited.
skip
The most damaging downside to the administration’s stumbles could be an exodus of talent from the broader government; scientists, lawyers and policy specialists at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, are openly disheartened at the prospect of working for Scott Pruitt, whose nomination as the agency’s new boss was approved by the Senate on Friday. And if others follow Mr. Hayward’s lead, capable people may be reluctant to come on board and fix things. That would leave the White House further isolated, particularly on foreign policy.
There is an old saying that goes like this, a leopard can’t change its spots. As much as we might like to believe otherwise it is highly unlikely that Trump will be able to change his.
Read article in its entirety BLOW THE FOLD.
