It’s the President, Stupid!
“The economy, stupid” was a phrase coined by James Carville during the 1992 presidential campaign to emphasize the then-prevailing recession in the United States. In an attempt to keep the campaign on message, Carville hung a sign in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters with the now famous slogan on it.
I’d suggest that the Biden campaign post a little sign on its headquarters with the phrase: “It’s the President, stupid” on it to reinforce the notion that the focus of the campaign should be on President Trump’s lack of leadership skills. While there are literally thousands of examples that demonstrate the president’s lack of leadership, in this column I’m going to concentrate on his handling of the deadly outbreak of coronavirus.
From the start of the crisis, President Trump has been downplaying and minimizing the risk of the coronavirus. He has repeatedly made false, misleading, careless, dangerous and narcissistic statements based on what’s best for his re-election not what is best for the American people. He has relied on his “hunches” and misinformation, rather than on facts provided by experts like Anthony Fauci, the long-time Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Trump’s missteps and mendacity started with, “We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” It proceeded to: “When it gets a little warmer, it [the coronavirus] miraculously goes away.” “We’re going very substantially down, not up . . . . We have it so well under control. I mean, we really have done a very good job.” “They would like to have the people come off [the Grand Princess cruise ship, off the coast of California]. I would like to have the people stay . . . . Because I like the numbers being where they are.” “As of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test [can have one], that’s the thing, and the tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect—the transcription was perfect.” “Anybody that wants a test can get a test,” adding, “Anybody right now and yesterday — anybody that needs a test gets a test. We — they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.” These misstatements are consistent with the president’s pattern of lying, praising himself, promising instant success and blaming others. It is also consistent with his general attitude toward science. The President has said that climate change is a Chinese “hoax” and that “vaccines can be very dangerous.” He has dismissed concern about the swine flu, telling Fox News host Neil Cavuto “it’s going to go away.” And recently the President gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who said, last month, “The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”
From early on President Trump has falsely claimed that a vaccine is right around the corner, when the experts were telling us that the earliest the vaccine can be ready for mass distribution is the end of the year. The biggest bungle has been the delays in expanding testing outside the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and problems in the supply chair. We still don’t know how extensively the virus has spread because so few people have been tested and we still don’t know when sufficient test kits will be available.
The president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that he lacks certain essential qualifications that enable great leaders to deal with complex and changing issues, i.e., integrity, communications skills, a complex cognitive structure, empathy, ego-strength, self-discipline, loyalty and managerial competence and a strategic perspective.
President Trump’s lack of empathy, simple cognitive structure and undisciplined nature all too frequently cause him to oversimplify complicated issues. In the world of Donald Trump there are no shades of gray, no nuances and few ambiguities.
The president’s impulsiveness, lack of self-discipline and a dearth of managerial and strategic planning skills often prevent him from seeing the big picture and differentiating the forest from the trees. The result is that he compartmentalizes, oversimplifies and nibbles at the edges of complex issues rarely addressing the root causes of problemsThe president’s lack of empathy, reinforced by his rigidity and dogmatism, makes it difficult for him to pick-up nuances, subtle cues and clues and reinforces his strong narcissism.
His lack of ego strength results in his reluctance to turn to experts and career civil servants for help, as he sees himself as all-knowing. Instead he surrounds himself with yes men/ women. Whenever someone disagrees, they are replaced and then demeaned (the turnover rate for key roles is extraordinarily high and is a signal that something is radically wrong). The benefits of staff continuity and interagency collaboration are not valued by President Trump.
I spent a decade working for a human resources consulting firm that touted a job-matching approach to selecting key staff. First one needs to carefully determine the key role requirements and second whether the applicant possesses the requisite personality dynamics required for job success. Donald Trump is fundamentally illsuited based on his personality dynamics to be the president and is the underlying reason he is makes poor short-sighted decisions. Benjamin Franklin got it right when he wrote, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
With the coronavirus crisis, the American people have witnessed first-hand the tragic consequence of electing someone who is totally mismatched to the job. The result is deadly!