On Wed, 12 Jun 2024 07:30:59 -0400, NoBody <NoBody@nowhere.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Jun 2024 08:53:28 -0600, Skeeter
><skeeterweed@photonmail.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <v489cf$ncdq$1@dont-email.me>, X@Y.com says...
>>>
>>> Like others before him, modern American presidents fail when they cannot
>>> master or comprehend the government that they inherit. This is a hard
>>> concept to grasp in an age when non-stop media coverage leads us to focus
>>> on the president?s communication skills and when presidents themselves
>>> value spin more than expertise. But in the end presidential failure is
>>> about reality, not words?no matter how lofty and inspiring or how crude and
>>> insulting.
>>>
>>> Contemporary presidents are especially prone to mistaking spin for reality
>>> for several reasons. First of all, they are nominated not by other elected
>>> officials who have some sense of what it takes to govern, but by activists
>>> and party electorates who value inspiration and entertainment. Second, the
>>> importance of mass communication leads presidents to believe that the words
>>> and activities that got them into office can work once they are in office:
>>> more rallies, more speeches, more tweets, and more television advertising.
>>>
>>> Nothing can be further from the truth.
>>>
>>> Presidential scholars have been aware of the disjuncture between
>>> campaigning and governing for some time now. More than a decade ago, Sam
>>> Kernell wrote a book called Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential
>>> Leadership (CQ Press, 2007), in which he showed that beginning with
>>> President Kennedy, modern presidents spent a great deal more time on minor
>>> presidential addresses and on domestic and international travel than their
>>> predecessors. All this communication, he argued, came at the expense of
>>> actual governing. Later on another presidential scholar, George C. Edwards
>>> III, writing in Overreach, Leadership in the Obama Presidency (Princeton
>>> University Press, 2012) argued that Obama thought he could go directly to
>>> the public to get support for his programs, an approach that placed
>>> communication over negotiation and that resulted in a stunning midterm loss
>>> for his party.
>>>
>>> Reality still matters, and spin has its limits?even in an era of social
>>> media.
>>>
>>> As long as things are going okay for most people, Americans tolerate a
>>> president?s verbal gymnastics. But when people are in trouble, even the
>>> most ardent government haters ask that famous question: ?Where?s the
>>> government?? And for most Americans, the president is the government.
>>> Following the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the
>>> collateral damage to the presidency of George W. Bush was extensive. His
>>> popularity never recovered and his second-term agenda, including bold
>>> changes to Social Security, was destroyed. Nearly a decade later when
>>> President Obama rolled out his signature achievement, the Affordable Care
>>> Act, the hugely embarrassing crashing of the computer systems meant to
>>> implement the act increased Republican opposition to it and undermined
>>> public confidence in the government?s ability to implement important
>>> executive actions.
>>>
>>> Trump?s failures during the coronavirus pandemic run the gamut from the
>>> rhetorical to the organizational. Every time the president speaks he seems
>>> to add to the fear and chaos surrounding the situation: telling Americans
>>> it was not serious by asserting his ?hunches? about data, assuring people
>>> that everyone would be tested even when there were very few tests
>>> available, telling people that we are very close to a vaccine when it is
>>> anywhere from 12 to 18 months away, mistakenly asserting that goods as well
>>> as people from Europe would be forbidden from entering the United States,
>>> and announcing that Google had a website for testing while the initiative
>>> was merely an unimplemented idea, were just a few of his televised gaffes.
>>> After every presidential statement, ?clarifications? were needed. Trump has
>>> the unique distinction of giving a national address meant to calm the
>>> country that had the effect of taking the stock market down over 1,000
>>> points.
>>>
>>> We have come to expect verbal imprecision and outright lies from this
>>> president, but that is more easily corrected on less momentous
>>> developments. When there is fundamental incompetence on matters of
>>> tremendous importance, voters punish poor results. And this is where
>>> Trump?s actions on the coronavirus have gone far off target. One of the
>>> most glaring deficiencies of his administration has been the failure to
>>> have enough tests available to identify those infected and to screen others
>>> for possible exposure. South Korea, a country a fraction of the size of the
>>> United States, is testing thousands more people a day than the United
>>> States. The failure to produce tests quickly will go down as one of the
>>> biggest failures in the overall handling of this disease because it
>>> prevented authorities from understanding the scope of the pandemic and
>>> therefore made it difficult for them to undertake appropriate steps to
>>> mitigate its spread. Other countries had tests and now state governments
>>> are rapidly rolling out their own tests after the CDC belatedly removed
>>> regulatory barriers. Even the nation?s chief infectious disease doctor,
>>> Anthony Fauci, has admitted that testing is a major failure?a statement
>>> that is most certainly not one of the president?s talking points.
>>>
>>> In this and other areas, Trump has failed to learn from the failures of his
>>> predecessors. When President Ronald Reagan signed into law the fundamental
>>> restructuring of the military known as the Goldwater-Nichols reforms,[1] he
>>> did this knowing that he did not want a military fiasco on his watch like
>>> the failed Iranian rescue mission that did in Jimmy Carter?s presidency.
>>> And following the total breakdown in the Federal Emergency Management
>>> Agency?s handling of Hurricane Katrina, President Barack Obama made sure
>>> his FEMA director was an experienced state emergency management director.
>>> He knew that poor performance during natural disasters would doom his
>>> presidency.
>>>
>>> During the Obama Administration, the White House dealt with a precursor of
>>> the coronavirus: the Ebola virus. While the scrambling eventually worked
>>> out thanks to decisive executive office leadership, it illustrated that
>>> pandemics were a fundamental national security threat. They created the
>>> Global Health Security Team in the National Security Council to prepare. In
>>> May of 2018, Trump disbanded the team allegedly because he never thought
>>> pandemics would happen and because ?I?m a business person. I don?t like
>>> having thousands of people around when you don?t need them.? Trump?s
>>> hurried justification for abandoning a unit (that was well short of
>>> thousands) showed Trump?s limited understanding of why government is
>>> different from business?it is in the business of preparing for low-
>>> probability events. For instance, the United States military spends
>>> billions every year preparing for wars all over the globe and even in outer
>>> space that may never take place. The art of presidential leadership is
>>> anticipating major problems and coming up with plans to mitigate them.
>>>
>>> In addition to learning from past administrations, presidents need the
>>> ability to anticipate reactions to their actions. The Trump administration
>>> has been especially inept on this dimension from the beginning. The first
>>> big executive order he issued, largely banning Muslims from coming to
>>> America, was so ill-conceived that chaos broke out in airports around the
>>> world as people with green cards to work in America and Muslims who had
>>> assisted U.S. military forces in Iraq were initially turned away. Airport
>>> chaos seems to be a specialty of the Trump administration. It reappeared
>>> this past weekend, as Americans came home from Europe in huge numbers
>>> following Trump?s announcement to close off travelers from Europe and
>>> screen returning Americans. When travelers arrived, they found vastly
>>> inadequate staffing at airports and were thus forced into the very
>>> situation medical authorities were warning against: large crowds being
>>> hoarded into small spaces with constant, close contact.
>>>
>>> Trump has also failed to fill top government positions and turnover is far
>>> higher than in any other recent administration, as Katherine Tenpas has
>>> tracked on these pages. The absence of expertise in top government jobs is
>>> especially dangerous during emergencies. Also, when positions are filled
>>> they have not necessarily gone to the strongest candidates. Take for
>>> instance leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
>>> nation?s top agency for infectious diseases. Dr. Robert Redfield?s
>>> appointment was opposed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest
>>> which warned the administration that Redfield lacked a public health
>>> background and that he was under investigation for scientific misconduct.
>>>
>>> Modern presidents inherit an enormous enterprise called the federal
>>> government that employs about the same number of people as the 6 largest
>>> U.S. companies and has a combined annual revenue that is larger than the
>>> combined revenues of the top 16 companies in the Fortune 500.[2] No wonder
>>> modern presidents have had trouble managing this enterprise?in an
>>> organization this big, something is always going right and something is
>>> always going wrong. A president who understands what?s going right can call
>>> on deep wells of expertise to protect himself from the failures that will
>>> inevitably be attributed to him. And on the flip side, a president who is
>>> aware of what?s going wrong can take corrective actions and try to stave
>>> off the kinds of bureaucratic meltdowns that will also be attributed to
>>> him.
>>>
>>> As Oval Office leadership fails while the pandemic spreads, governors,
>>> mayors, university presidents, religious leaders, business executives, and
>>> health providers are stepping into the leadership vacuum that has been the
>>> Trump presidency. They have sent workers home to telework, announced their
>>> own social distancing rules, and developed their steps to limit the spread
>>> of the pandemic. This tragedy teaches us many things about preparedness and
>>> public health, but it also warns us about the dangers of presidents who are
>>> manifestly unprepared to govern.
>>>
>>> [1] These were named after Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and
>>> Congressman William Nichols (D-Ala.) and established a new era of joint
>>> activity and preparation among the branches of the United States military.
>>>
>>> [2] Elaine C. Kamarck, Why Presidents Fail and How they Can Succeed Again,
>>> Brookings Institution Press, 2016, page 123.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trumps-failed-presidency/
>>
>>What failures?
>
>Isn't it interesting that the article was pages long but didn't answer
>that simple question?

A single term presidency is by definition a failed one, isn't it?

Carter, Ford, Fillmore . . .

Swill
--
"I don't like saying the word, "bullshit" in front of these beautiful children so I won't say it. I will not say it."
- Donald Trump in Phoenix, AZ - Thursday, June 6, 2024

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