By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The political class is still coming to grips with what
appears to be Donald Trump’s novel management philosophy: Government by
Twitter. Put aside the by-now-familiar weirdness of our president-elect’s
gloating over Arnold Schwarzenegger’s poor Celebrity
Apprentice ratings or swipes at Meryl Streep. Trump’s Twitter addiction
poses heretofore unnoticed challenges for his administration.
The president-elect often emphasizes the value of being
“unpredictable.” And he has a point — in certain contexts. Keeping our enemies
guessing has advantages. Defenders of Trump’s habit of jabbing corporations
about their offshoring decisions will tell you that Trump is “setting the tone
from the top.” Since such decisions are often made with a narrow and subjective
cost-benefit calculus, the argument goes, using tweets to encourage executives
to err on the side of “America first” is a valuable way to change the business
culture.
Whether or not you like Trump’s economic reasoning, you
can see why he likes keeping CEOs afraid of the crack of his Twitter whip.
But what about his own appointees and allies in Congress?
When I’ve talked to veterans of the Ronald Reagan
administration, particularly from the speechwriting or policy shops, I’ve often
heard a common observation. Knowing what the boss believed was both empowering
and efficient. If you know a policy or a line in a speech will never fly with
the president, you won’t bother pursuing it.
Peter Robinson, the acclaimed speechwriter, has written
at length about how knowing Reagan’s vision made his job easier. Robinson could
write “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” because he knew it was what Reagan
wanted to have happen.
“Ronald Reagan’s writers were never attempting to
fabricate an image, just to produce work that measured up to the standard
Reagan himself had already established,” Robinson would later write. “His
policies were plain. He had been articulating them for decades.”
The vast literature on leadership and management hammers
away on this point: Provide a vision and then let the troops do the hard work.
Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, put it this way: “In
order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same
page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going.” British
field marshal Bernard “Monty” Montgomery said that his definition of leadership
is “the capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and
the character which inspires confidence.”
Except for trade policy, there are few areas where
Trump’s troops have a clear idea of exactly
what the boss wants, and his compulsive tweeting adds a layer of
unpredictability. I’ve talked to a half-dozen committed and principled
conservatives considering jobs in the administration, and I heard one recurring
concern: “Will Trump have my back?”
The point isn’t about personal loyalty, but resolve in
the face of the inevitable political and media backlashes that will come with
any serious reform effort.
Consider two recent incidents. The House GOP caucus voted
to sharply curb the power of the Office of Congressional Ethics. Contrary to
some opportunistic statements by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D.,
Calif.), there’s bipartisan consensus that the OCE is a hot mess. House
Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) led an effort to scrap it,
knowing that the GOP would take a political hit for doing so. When the
predictable firestorm hit, Trump hied to Twitter to mock the effort as a
distraction, earning a nanosecond of favorable coverage by killing the
initiative.
A more crucial example is the effort to repeal Obamacare.
Trump issued a series of Twitter fatwas last week, saying that Congress
shouldn’t do anything that lets Democrats off the hook for the problems of the
Affordable Care Act.
Politically, I think Trump is right to be concerned about
the perils of repealing Obamacare without having a replacement ready. But his
glib response elicits fear among some conservatives that he won’t stand fast on
repealing Obamacare, or much else. There are countless areas — entitlements,
civil rights, immigration, etc. — where serious conservative reforms will spark
controversy, horrible headlines, and negative coverage on “the shows” the
president-elect watches obsessively. Will Trump impetuously use Twitter to
triangulate against his own troops?
Right now, Trump’s defenders wave off such concerns,
saying he’s using Twitter to communicate a clear vision to his team and the
whole country. Time will tell. To me, that seems like a generous reading
between the lines — or between tweets about Meryl Streep.
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