American Leadership is Increasingly a Ship of Fools

American Leadership is Increasingly a Ship of Fools

It was a painful mismatch in competence, experience and understanding. I am talking about the conversation (left above) in the White House, on May 6th, between newly elected and soft-spoken Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and a rougher American President, Donald Trump. Trump, Wharton undergraduate. Carney, a Harvard-educated and Oxford PhD in economics, who served as governor for both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. But competence is not at the top of Trump’s list for working for his administration, even in what is supposed to be a non-political hire, through the nation’s Civil Service protocols. Most federal bureaucrats have served across Democratic and Republican administrations, but the new Trump mandate – fire or neutralize those bureaucrats who do not affirmative support each and every Trump executive order, and do not hire anyone who does not pass the loyalty-to-Trump test – is not focused on the best and the brightest; competence is not a priority.

Kate Plummer, writing for the June 4th Newsweek explains: “Those seeking a job in the federal government will now have to write an essay in support of President Donald Trump's executive orders, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management… Vince Haley, the White House's head of domestic policy, wrote in the May 29 memorandum that all civil service applicants must answer a series of essays as part of the job recruitment process, including one about how they would ‘help advance Trump's policy priorities…

“According to the memo, the federal government's strategy to hire people to the civil service, dubbed the ‘Merit Hiring Plan,’ will require certain applicants to write four 200-word essays about their work ethic, skills and experience, commitment to the Constitution, and plans to ‘advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities.’… [Question 3] How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” While the President has leeway for his political appointees, adding political loyalty to Civil Services jobs is not acceptable.

The abysmal qualities of Trump’s permitted appointments are bad enough, but seeping political ideology into Civil Service applications is not only wrong, but it steers the federal bureaucracy far beyond the term of the President… which is why political appointees tend to be replaced during an administration change, and “civil service” employees cannot be fired without cause and have statutory and regulatory protections. But do we want ignorant fools embedded in our civil service? Trump’s “whatever I say, do” appointees would normally be filtered out if they were applying for a civil service job… but…

The most egregious example of an ignorant and incompetent cabinet appointment was clearly reflected in May 20th as Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, described “habeas corpus” to a Senate Committee as the “right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” Wrong, dear. “Habeas corpus” is the constitutional right that ensures that people have a chance to challenge their imprisonment in front of a judge. Habeas corpus ensures that the government cannot detain someone without a lawful basis.

Perceptions and lies? Where do they come from? MAGA ideology, even when blatantly false, is creeping into public educational lesson plans and textbooks, as this excerpt, written by Travis Gettys for the May 5th Raw Story about the Oklahoma public schools reflects: “Oklahoma high schools will be required starting in August to teach President Donald Trump's debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.

“The new curriculum written by Trump-loving state superintendent Ryan Walters will analyze turning points of 21st-Century American society, including what is described as ‘discrepancies in 2020 elections results’ and match baseless claims made by Trump afterward, reported Heartland Signal … ‘The purpose of the standard is simple: we want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left wing propaganda,’ Walters told the Washington Post in March. ‘Students deserve to examine every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by millions of Americans in 2020.

“The curriculum also directs teachers to ensure that students can ‘identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab,’ and ‘explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts,’ which Walters announced would establish ‘the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation.’…The MAGA ally has been publicly praised by the president on multiple occasions and drawn criticism by ordering Oklahoma schools to show a video of him railing against the ‘woke teacher’s unions’ and mandating last June that all state public schools had to teach Bible lessons.”

Trump’s autocratic press for loyalty over competence is everywhere. For example, Nobel Prize winning Dr. Ardem Patapoutian – a renowned molecular biologist and neuroscientist and Scripps Research Institute assistant professor, who fled war-torn Lebanon in 1986 and is a naturalized American citizen, received that award in connection with his research on pain (specifically human receptors for temperatures and touch) – lost a federal research grant hours after “he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to ‘any city, any university I want,’ he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years… Dr. Patapoutian declined, because he loves his adopted country. Many scientists just setting out on their careers, however, fear there is no other option but to leave.” NY Times, June 3rd.

As part of Trump’s belief that white Americans are now a major discriminated class, his attack on Harvard has expanded to the independent Harvard Law Review. “The civil rights offices of the departments of Education and Health and Human Services said the agencies launched the investigations ‘based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal’… over allegedly factoring race into editorial decisions at the legal publication.” Politico, April 28th. We built the strongest economy on earth based on our great universities creating the finest minds anywhere. What do you think happens to a country where loyalty to an autocrat becomes the priority, and competence and education are relegated to an afterthought?

I’m Peter Dekom, and assuming we continue to have full and fair elections, I wonder if there will be a future presidential candidate running under a “make America great again” banner, referencing the pre-Trump United States?