I'm Doing A Tremendous Job by Nancy OhanianYesterday Eliana Johnson noted that Trump and Bolton are spurning top-level North Korea planning and that after two months on the job, Bolton has not called a single top-level National Security Council meeting on North Korea. Trump thinks he can just wing it? I would be surprised if he could find North Korea on a map and knows anything about North Korea beyond what Dennis Rodman has told him. Is he really bringing Rodman to the summit? "For decades," wrote Johnson, "top presidential advisers have used a methodical process to hash out national security issues before offering the president a menu of options for key decisions. On an issue like North Korea, that would mean White House Situation Room gatherings of the secretaries of state and defense along with top intelligence officials, the United Nations ambassador, and even the treasury secretary, who oversees economic sanctions." Methodical and Trump are rarely used in the same sentence, unless in the sense that he isn't. Chaotic is the opposite of methodical.
since Trump agreed on a whim to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on March 8, the White House’s summit planning has been unstructured, according to a half-dozen administration officials. Trump himself has driven the preparation almost exclusively on his own, consulting little with his national security team outside of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo....Trump’s ad hoc approach to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with whom he has traded threats of nuclear war, partly reflects the disorder that has always gripped the Trump White House-- itself a reflection of the commander in chief’s management style.
Is style the problem? Or the fact that he's "grown less disciplined?" Or is its Jonathan Chait offered yesterday because Señor Trumpanzee is way too lazy to do his job? Trumpanzee, he assures every person who has noticed this in the last decades, years or months, "possessed less relevant experience and subject expertise for the job of president than any person ever elected to the job. Those deficits can be offset, to a degree, with dogged study and hard work. But rather than make up for his historical lack of qualifications, Trump has compounded the problem with historical laziness. He famously lounges in front of the television having 'Executive Time' until 11 a.m., checks out early, refuses to read briefings, and otherwise disdains the most important parts of his job.
Three new reports highlight the laziness problem. First, Trump is acting cranky and resentful in anticipation of his journey to faraway Canada. “President Trump is planning to fly to Canada on Friday. He is not exactly happy about it,” reports the Washington Post. “Trump is a homebody president, preferring to sleep in the White House-- or at one of his signature properties-- than in hotels, so he is generally reluctant to take long journeys. Furthermore, he prefers visiting places where he is feted-- such as on his trips last year to Beijing, Paris and the Saudi capital-- over attending summits where the attending leaders are treated as equals.”Apparently nobody informed Trump that the job involves foreign travel. He also has little patience with domestic functions. The Postobtained audio of his meeting with FEMA to discuss preparedness for hurricane season. You might think Trump would grasp the importance of the issue given that thousands of Americans died on his watch in the wake of a bungled hurricane response in Puerto Rico. You would be wrong. Trump was totally unable to concentrate on the task at hand.Despite the fact he was at FEMA, and supposed to be planning for disasters, “President Trump had a lot else on his mind, turning the closed-door discussion into soliloquies on his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party’s fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”...Asked if he’s prepared for the North Korea summit, Trump assured a reporter that he is. He then explained that he believes little preparation is required for something like negotiating nuclear disarmament with an erratic, delusional, hermetic dictator. “I think I’m very well prepared,” Trump said, “I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about attitude. It’s about willingness to get things done.”
