BY BOB BEARDEN
Where are the clowns? Oh, don’t bother, they’re here.
His poll numbers are at a historically low ebb – no president in the history of polling has ever experienced such low poll numbers in their first 60 days – period. None were ever below 50% at that point in their presidency. And now he has suffered a major defeat in his first try on one of the three main campaign promises – to destroy ObamaCare. His blame game includes everyone on the planet except one person himself. Is there not a pattern here?
He failed miserably at the art of the deal – one simple thing he is supposed to be the best at – making deals and arm-twisting any recalcitrant holdout to make the deal happen. He cajoled, he threatened and he begged but to no avail. He failed, and blaming everyone else shows a total lack of real business acumen. In business, as in life, you accept what blame you deserve, say OK that didn’t go like I planned and move on. You don’t spend an entire weekend in a tweet storm blaming your failure on everyone else.
But to make a deal work you have to have a game plan that goes beyond “I have a plan, it’s gonna be beautiful, everyone will love it, and everyone will have a wonderful health insurance.” But there was no game plan, beyond Day One, repeal. There was no plan at all. It was just, as per usual, a lot of hot air – nothing but brag, swagger and out and out lies.
This man’s game plan for anything doesn’t exist beyond, “Well, if it doesn’t work then I ain’t to blame.” He has no clue how our government works because he never learned how our government works. He thinks our government works like he ran his businesses – buy ’em up and try to sell ‘em at a profit. And if that doesn’t work, declare bankruptcy and move on to the next coming thing.
Government doesn’t work that way and it was never designed to work that way. Our founders understood that government couldn’t work as a business model and they didn’t design our government to reflect that. But The Donald doesn’t read, he doesn’t study, he doesn’t understand anything about the working of government and that’s the real problem with his presidency. He hasn’t brought anyone into his inner circle or his cabinet who knows how a government is supposed to work.
He drained the swamp alright and in doing so he put a whole bunch of top-level CEO swamp-dwellers in charge of our government who, just like him, have no real knowledge of how our government works nor how it is supposed to work and they are flopping around in the mess he has created for them because they are swamp-dwellers without a swamp to dwell in.
Sure, they all know how to feather their own nests and pollute everyone else’s because that’s how they got to the top rung of their companies. They know how to cut backdoor deals and make themselves golden parachutes when their world goes sour on them. But they don’t know squat about diplomacy or how to engage world leaders.
Trump has polluted the executive branch with real swamp dwellers who don’t have a clue as to how to effectively govern.
They are truly fish out of water and the main thing they know is how to toady up to the big guy upstairs and I’m not referring to anything religious. They got where they were in business because they knew how to toady when it was right and convenient to toady. But they don’t know jack-shit about how our government and the world of governments are supposed to work.
And they aren’t trying to learn from jack-shit either. They are sharks who have been placed in a dunk tank they can’t in the least fathom. From the bowels of the West Wing we hear over and over this refrain, “Send in the clowns, send in the clowns, where are the clowns?”
And finally a plaintive reply from the Oval Office, “Oh, don’t bother, they’re here!”
– Bob Bearden is a trustee with the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation and a member of Mayflower Congregational Church, UCC in Oklahoma City
