All presidents until Trump have had formal policy processes and informal ones--"kitchen cabinets" dating back as far as Andrew Jackson. The difference with Trump is he has the most dysfunctional policy "process" of any president, which he largely ignores or discounts.
Instead, he relies on informal advice from a very small group of friends, family and sycophants plus, to an unprecedented degree, 20-30 talking heads who appear on Fox. Because he reads little and is so skeptical of key sources of government advice, like the IC or diplomats...
his Fox Cabinet is relatively more important than past such informal groups. But their clout is even greater because Trump perceives Fox not only as a source of advice but as both a window onto his "base" and to the world at large. What Fox shows is his only reality.
He has very little interaction with voters--he ventures out of the White House less than other presidents and only then into very controlled settings where the feedback he gets is predictable and, often confirms themes and ideas he has seen on Fox.
So those relatively few talking heads shape his worldview to a degree no comparable group in American history has shaped the view of a leader. (Admittedly this is also true because Trump's critical thinking faculties are so profoundly limited.
He does not seek alternative points of view as have past presidents nor does he seek even basic facts. He seeks only support for his pre-existing beliefs, of all his biases confirmation bias is perhaps the strongest and most pernicious.)
The few advisors he had who might challenge him are now gone or will be in a few days. This will only increase the influence of Fox News--which as has often been noted has now been integrated with this White House in an extraordinary way.
With personalities or executives he saw on Fox News holding top positions in his government (Bolton, Nauert, Shine) and former WH staffers like Hope Hicks now working at Fox News. I am a student of how White House policy processes work, have written much on the subject.
I have never seen anything so perverse or dangerous. I've never seen a president so contemptuous of real advice or differing points of view, never seen one with less intellectual curiosity, with less educational or experiential background to support his decision-making.
I have never seen a president who has so undermined traditional sources of policy advice in his own government--whether by ignoring them or by publicly attacking them. I have never seen a president with a weaker group of advisors than this one will have in 2019.
I have never seen a president more isolated. I have never seen a president more dependent on an outside group of profoundly biased, desperately unqualified, often laughably unhinged advisors (Dobbs, Pirro, Hannity, etc.) than Trump gets through his Fox connection.
All presidents have flaws. The policy systems we set up are to help offset those weaknesses and to enable normal mortals to grapple with the often gargantuan decisions of the presidency. This president lacks those.
As it happens of all our presidents he is the one who would have had the most to gain from them. But he is the most immune to them, most dismissive of them precisely because he does not realize his weaknesses. Which brings us to his greatest flaw of all.
In the end, the critical decisions of the presidency rely more on character than anything else. Over time the presidency reveals the true character of the president in ways no campaign or prior experience ever could.
In two years we have discovered that Trump's character is the most defective of anyone who has ever held the presidency. He is not simply intellectual sub-par or misguided in his faith in his own gifts and "gut." He is a malignant narcissist. He is corrupt.
He is mean-spirited. He is venal. He is short-sighted. He is a terrible judge of character in others. He is without compassion. He is without humility. In short, he has none of the traits we would seek in a leader and all of those we should fear.
And he has destroyed the systems that can help a president grow or be better than himself and replaced them with ones that amplify his worst traits and convince him daily that they are assets, attributes, working. That system does this by trafficking in lies and distortions.
It creates an alternative universe in the tiniest, most toxic bubble ever to exist around a president. It gives him the impression that he is competent & successful when the opposite is true. It suggests to him that he is a genius & politically successful when he is clearly not.
And it puts each and every one of us at risk daily. It leads to the crushing toll this presidency has taken--the daily litany of real costs to our rule of law, to our environment, to children on our border, to allies overseas, to our economy,to victims of the enemies he supports.
Processes in the White House and the character of those around the president and that of the president himself often seem remote. But it does not take much scrutiny of the headlines to realize that is not the case.
Daily there are profound costs of associated with this presidency and the dangers of more grievous consequences loom large. Not just because we have the worst president of all time but because the system created around him amplifies his defects and eliminates checks against them.
(A fact not helped by the abrogation of the oversight responsibilities of the Congress during Trump's first two years in office.) We don't have policy processes in this White House. We have policy pathologies. The system is sick and it is putting us all at risk.
We ignore it at our peril & we must actively support the efforts of the incoming House leadership as they work to counter the broken WH system & to restore the elements purged from the president's world--truth, facts, reality, science, history, values and our national interests.
