Thread: Why I do not consider what Woodward is describing in the White House a coup. There has been neither an attempt to change executive nor regime. Quite the opposite in fact. @SeanDEhrlich @sgadarian @dadakim @texasinafrica (1/n)
What we are seeing here is two things. The first is an attempt to prop up the nominal government. These are people working from the inside to keep Trump nominally in charge, they aren't trying to get Trump impeached or invoke the 25th amendment.
The second is that they are engaging in quite extreme principal agent behavior, i.e. they are trying to force the principal to do what they want using bureaucratic means. But in order to do that, they have to prop the President up. If Pence comes in, they lose control too.
What is extra weird here is that we are seeing extreme PA behavior not by the permanent bureaucratic state or the military, but rather by the very same political actors recently selected by Trump to help him pursue his aims. This is why they don't want a coup. They're temporary.
Have we seen this before? Yes, mainly when Presidents are incapacitated. Wilson / Mrs. Wilson; Reagan w/ alzheimers and his cabinet. It's the sort of thing you can pull off only when the center is so weak that everybody grabs at power. Sick President Syndrome. Lame or dead duck.
Whats fascinating to me is how much this is an extreme form of things we see often, when cabinet secretaries or military officers attempt to steer policy "from below" by limiting information flow to the President. See Obama's Wars.
What happens if a President shows up but doesn't learn or govern, leaving his cabinet squabbling and attempting to steer the ship of state? The system has a constitutional and a political remedy for this, but neither is being invoked END
ADDENDUM: I hadn't realized I had an audience beyond a few political scientists. It may be useful to explain what a principal-agent problem is. It's the problem of delegation. You want somebody else to act on your behalf but they don't always want the same things you want. (1/n)
Leaders are limited in time and information. They rely on their staffs to look out at the world, gather information, provide options, and then implement whatever course of action is chosen. But at all those points a bureaucrat has discretion which causes problems. (2/n)
Bureaucrats are notorious for managing leaders from below. They are the long term experts on a topic so leaders have to rely on them for advice and options. This is especially true in esoteric fields, including but not limited to security. (3/n)
Bureaucrats can present only the information they want the leader to have, and only the options they want the leader to consider, thus leading her to make the choices that the bureaucrats wanted in the first place. Leaders try (but usually fail) to break out of the bubble. (4/n)
For a non political example, consider what happens whenever you bring your car into a garage. You want the car to run, mechanic wants to pay their bills & for your car to run, your incentives are not perfectly aligned, & so you distrust mechanic even as you rely upon them (5/n)
A leader has this same set of problems "on the way down" too. Even once a decision is made, it has to be implemented, and the leader observes that implementation imperfectly. If there are delays, is that natural or is that shirking? (6/n)
The military are masters at "slow rolling" things they do not want. In this administration we are hearing claims that Mattis is being asked for military options he thinks are unwise so he just delays providing them, hoping Trump will get distracted (7/n)
A classic way to avoid this is to hire people who want things that the leader wants. Hence political appointees for cabinet positions. However, in every administration cabinet appointees get "captured" by their organizations (8/n)
They have to get along with their people in order for things to get done, and they are also limited to the information they are receiving from their subordinates, and so sometimes they end up representing their agency more than the President (9/n)
In this administration we saw Tillerson at war with the State Department. What is fascinating though is that it seems Tillerson was also at war with the President. Trump is unable to find people to carry out his wishes, perhaps because what he wants changes constantly (10/n)
Even though Trump has chosen his cabinet and advisors, because they (if Woodward is right) see him as a menace, he cannot trust them. It is also possible that he would not have trusted them anyway. I hope that helped. END
