Failing to plan is planning to fail

Our country is dealing with three crises simultaneously: the Covid-19 pandemic (150,000 deaths and counting), an economic collapse caused by the pandemic (economy contracted 33% last quarter), and civil unrest. It’s reasonable to expect our national leaders to lead us through these trying times. That leadership begins at the top, the presidency, and it requires decisions based on a plan of action to meet these crises. Instead, we are given tweets, bragging, and a denial of responsibility.

We shouldn’t have expected Trump and his administration to make any plans. If Trump had paid attention when he was a student (undergraduate, not MBA) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, he would have learned the importance of planning. Planning requires reading up on an issue and having discussions with people who know more than you do. But in interviews before becoming president, Trump said he does not need to read extensively because he reaches the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.” He also said reading long documents is a waste of time because he absorbs the gist of an issue very quickly. “I’m a very efficient guy,” he said. “Now, I could also do it verbally, which is fine. I’d always rather have – I want it short. There’s no reason to do hundreds of pages because I know exactly what it is. Do me a favor: Don’t send me a report. Send me, like, three pages.”

Trump is skeptical of experts because “they can’t see the forest for the trees.” He believes that when he makes decisions, people see that he instinctively knows the right thing to do: “A lot of people said, ‘Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time.’ ”

So we shouldn’t be surprised now when Trump is asked what he would do in a second term, and he never talks about his plans, or even if he has any. Republican senators say there has been little discussion about what Trump’s second term would look like, other than the assumption he might have a chance to appoint another Supreme Court justice and fill other judicial vacancies.

When asked about his plans during a recent interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump just rambled on. “Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s an, a very important meaning.

“I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, seventeen times. All of a sudden, I’m president of the United States. You know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady and I say, ‘This is great.’ But I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody, and I have great people in the administration.

“You make some mistakes. Like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.”

It’s only fourteen weeks until the election. It will be an interesting time, to say the least.

The Lincoln Project (LincolnProject.US) is a political action committee organized in 2019 by several prominent Republicans and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent Trump’s reelection and defeat his enablers in the Senate. In April, the committee announced their endorsement of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT.org) is an initiative that began in May to produce a $10 million advertising campaign featuring testimonials from 100 Republicans, conservatives, moderates, right-leaning independents, and former Trump voters explaining why they will not vote for Trump in 2020. The campaign is aimed at white college-educated suburban voters, encouraging them to cross party lines to support Joe Biden.

Candidate Trump told us, “I alone can fix it.” He just never told us what “it” is or how he’d do it. He’s still not telling us what he’ll fix or how. Neither has he revealed any plans regarding the environment (climate change is a hoax), the economy ((just cut taxes), health care (“nobody knew how complicated it is”). However, it seems Trump has settled on a strategy for his reelection campaign: provoke violence by sending federal law enforcement agents to confront protesters in cities with Democratic mayors, exacerbate tensions, and then claim to have restored law and order. This is not a plan, unless his plan is to further undermine democracy.

Mark Berg is a community activist in Adams County and a proud Liberal. His email address is MABerg175@Comcast.net.