Petulance and Character

We have seen much petulance in the past several days. A new president is sworn into office and all we get are smug smiles, leering sneers, thumbs up signs, raised fists and cold shoulders. And these all from the president himself.

We are not used to this behavior on our national stage.

Let there be no mistaking that this stage is not Trump’s but ours – the American People’s.

There are many in public office in Washington DC. Several hundred of them are elected directly by their constituents. Many others are not; they are appointed by elected officials. Thousands more are hired to fill vacancies caused by the change of administrations in due course.

Still working quietly day by day are the tens of thousands of federal civil servants who have been vetted, trained and hired through tried human resource protocols. They are the ones doing the work of the federal government, not those who strut their stages of influence. No, the work force does the daily tasks that actually is the government. Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Military. Intelligence operations. Health and human services functions. Judiciary. Justice, investigations, analysis, planning, budgeting and safeguarding the business processes of our large organizations. The institutional life of the government is huge. And complex.

Dealing with this as a blind bureaucracy would be a mistake. These are professional people in professional jobs for which they have been well trained. They ought not be treated as chattel. Blanket hiring freezes hurts them as they struggle with normal turnover and unable to replace those who die, retire, become disabled, or change jobs. The remaining workforce is required under hiring freezes to take on more and more tasks without relief. Not a good thing for accuracy and efficiency. Private organizations know this lesson well.

And salary freezes as well? On top of the growing work burdens and overtime requirements? Without merit increases, or promotional opportunities?

If you were working in this environment, how would you feel?

If your argument is with management and decision makers, focus your attention there, not on the workers who carry out the directives of others.

This is just one of the current whims of petulance being carried out by a new president who does not know his job yet.

Instead of learning what it is he is supposed to do in his new role, he argues over photos comparing inauguration attendance comparing his to his predecessor’s? The record is well established. The Obama inaugural attendance broke all records. It is well documented. The Trump festivities were much more modestly attended. And TV coverage was heavy but viewership unmeasured. No way to document TV viewership, so this cannot be counted as attendance.

Like a child Trump focuses attention on the poor comparison and has to blame someone. So it is the messenger who catches the fallout. The Media? Give me a break! The media reports facts: who, what, where and when. The why remains for history to settle or for research to uncover. That takes time. Besides, I don’t want media opinion unless it is well researched and documented. That then is factual and not opinion.

Polls will tell us the public’s opinion. And that may be interesting but not a driving force unless it is in campaign season and indicative of a pending tide of votes. In governance season it matters little.

So why the deep and abiding interest of our new instantaneous president in chief? It is his ego, of course. To be sure that is my opinion and not a fact. But then again it may be fact. I’m just not the person to claim it is at this point. That’s up to you and history to discern.

Meanwhile, what will we be dealing with?

January 27, 2017