In private business, you fire someone and he goes away. In presidential politics, you fire someone and he becomes an enemy for life with a multimillion dollar book deal and a schedule full of interviews.
In private business, when you threaten someone with a lawsuit, she weighs the cost of a legal fight and settles. In presidential politics, she correctly calculates that a lawsuit with the president about the sex they had is a path to lasting celebrity.
I am starting to suspect the president may not be making the transition from the private to the public sector all that smoothly. For example, I wonder why he has not yet learned that high-ranking officials in the Justice Department have to talk less while they are still in the Justice Department.
The president does not know how to deal with people who are not afraid of him when they cannot be charmed or starstruck first. He also does not handle pressure well.
Richard Nixon's paranoia was the stuff of legend. Yet he knew how to maintain dignity in public. I am old enough to remember Nixon's resignation speech. My family watched it on television. He looked up from his prepared remarks and said straight into the camera, "I have never been a quitter." I remember my father saying aloud, respectfully, "That's right." We all agreed. Even in total and ignominious defeat, Nixon exuded defiance.
The current president squeals like a birthday princess who did not get a pony when some petty embarrassment befalls him.
The contrast is especially sharp in context. The president's party holds the majority in both chambers of Congress. They rule in most state capitols. The party in power is riding the crest of the business cycle. Late 2016 and early 2017 showed everyone the deepest floodwaters of one-party political dominance during my life to date. Even after the disasters of the George W. Bush administration swept Barack Obama into office, there was only a briefly similar spike for the Democrats. Even after Watergate, the Republican Party was never reduced to the national near-impotence of the Democrats after the November 2016 election.
If the president was minimally competent and calm, he could tell the "deep state," non-Fox media, liberals, coastal elites, Hollywood, Stormy Daniels, activists and Parkland High School students to all go take a flying leap.
Loathe as I am to bring up Hillary Clinton, who is still some sort of red flag to so many Republicans, at least she knew what would happen if she got elected. Her presidency would be a nonstop carnival of impeachment attempts -- and she ran anyway. The current occupant of the White House went off his hinges when his inauguration crowd did not set a record.
Clinton is history. I know she still has friends here in Northwest Arkansas, but her only relevance today is for comparison. She will never recover politically from being defeated by the "grab them" candidate. But at least she could handle pressure. One could argue she needed time first, though. Too often, her first response to a new stress test was to clam up.
My, what a contrast.
I remember a Democratic congressman once saying contemptuously that Ronald Reagan's greatest talent was his ability to walk away from disaster with a smile and a wave. I remember thinking then what a useful skill that was for a president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a master at such self-confidence, even with all the challenges he had to deal with in his life and leadership.
The best way to handle pressure is to effectively relieve it. It is a telling sign of this president's unpreparedness for this job that he tends to make his problems worse instead of better.
Hiring Rudy Giuliani as a lawyer, for instance, is a mistake. Giuliani talks too much. Enemies can always see and hear Giuliani coming. He can defend the president more effectively the fewer constraints he has on what he says, at least if he can keep himself within the bounds of provable fact and logic. Any good attorney knows when to shut up and has the ability to do so. The president's weakness for flash and show over substance is his greatest weakness.
In business, bluster can scare off would-be litigants. In presidential politics, your legal foes cannot be scared off, least of all by bluster. Bluster is interpreted -- rightly -- as a sign of weakness.
------------v------------
Doug Thompson is a political reporter and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWADoug.
Commentary on 04/21/2018