On Friday, February 21, 2025, the "Review & Outlook" column in The Wall Street Journal included a statement about "Trump's Executive-Power Restoration." According to The Journal, our president's "bold order putting ‘independent agencies’ under White House control echoes the Founders." The column begins this way:
In case you haven’t noticed, President Trump is trying to assert control over the entire executive branch of government, for better or worse. His latest effort is an executive order published Tuesday that imposes new White House supervision over so-called independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. This could be a constitutional watershed (emphasis added).
There is no doubt that the very essence of our Constitutional government is at stake, but The Journal is wrong about what "the Founders" contemplated. What they contemplated was a government in which the "Legislative" branch decided all major issues, and wrote the laws, with the "Executive" branch given the subsidiary responsibility of seeing that "the laws were faithfully executed." After all, the American Revolution was fought to extract the United States, and its government, from the grip of a "King."
Our current president, recently, proclaimed himself a "King," and even if Mr. Trump meant this only metaphorically, and to indicate simply that he considers himself to be a powerful and effective manager and leader, there is still a pretty significant problem.
Here's the problem: Mr. Trump, in truth, is not doing a very good job managing the federal government, after having announced that it was time, as The Wall Street Journal put it, for "new White House supervision" over important governmental agencies. Maybe it would actually be a good idea to undertake a substantive review of various governmental bureaucracies. I, personally, can't really say that if this were done correctly it would be a mistake. However, any such review should be undertaken only in a very well-thought-out way, with lots of opportunities for those affected, and the public, to understand what's going on, and to comment and participate. This would be the opposite of what is actually happening.
I am sorry to have to say it out loud, and to question Mr. Trump's sense of his own greatness, but Mr. Trump just isn't a very effective, or competent, top manager. He thinks he is one, certainly, and he says he is one, but he is not.
Mr. Trump, for instance, somehow managed to drive two different Atlantic City casinos into bankruptcy, which is hard to understand, since where gambling casinos are concerned, the "House" always wins.
It is worth paying attention to what a column in The New York Times said, on the very same day that The Journal published its editorial comment, which I have quoted above. Here is The Times' headline: "We Are Blundering Our Way Into a Financial Crisis." If that financial crisis does come, it is Mr. Trump who will have gotten us there. On a different topic, as I have recently noted, the president's failure to conduct himself properly (and wisely) in a meeting with President Zelensky of Ukraine is having a negative impact on our ability remain in a leadership position in the world.
In terms of both competence and experience, as a manager - and as our chief executive - Donald J. Trump is just not very good.
He is an "Apprentice," and he has gotten himself (and the nation) all mixed up.
Our president does think he is a competent executive, course. However, that is only because he used to play one on TV!
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