Can't teach old Trump new tricks - a learning moment

[timelets]

After four months of the Trump administration, we can see that our so-called president is making all the standard moves that a CEO of a private corporation would make in a hostile takeover:

- declares previous management grossly incompetent;
- fires most senior staff;
- instructs his lawyers to issue legally plausible justifications for the firings;
- hires loyalists into key positions;
- exaggerates own successes;
- borrows more capital, citing new "improved" valuations (this is the major element of his tax reform);
etc.

Unfortunately for Trump and for the country, the United States of America is not a private corporation. Her citizens are not employees; her judges are not the legal department; her press is not corporate PR; her economy is not a command-and-control structure reporting to the CEO; her trade is a diverse complex system that, unlike a corporate balance sheet, doesn't boil down to a single number in the balance of trade calculations. It's not just "complicated", as in "Healthcare is complicated." Rather, it's different, i.e. it's complicated in a way that neither Trump, nor his appointees from the private sector have anticipated. Their experience and success as businessmen don't translate into experience and success of statesmen.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

I got the same feeling - that this idiot thinks we are his employees and he's our boss. To figure out that he is our employee, it's kind of too hard for his little brain.

[timelets]

Moreover, his most successful TV gig was playing an asshole boss. He's brain is wired to do just one or two "bossy" things. That's it.

[lm644]

True. Unfortunately, we are stuck with him, for better or for worse. Well... for worse, I guess, - there does not seem to be any "better" in the near future.

[timelets]

Yeah, we are stuck, but it's important to understand the specifics of how we are stuck.