Status Symbols

Too Many Want The Status of a Job, But Don't Actually Want to Do the Work

Titles can be intoxicating. They can present an aura of success, achievement, power, or authority that others seem to be impressed with. There are also bonuses that go along with certain titles; perks of the job, better pay (usually) and the imporance of knowing that often one is on the inside of the decisionmaking process. Titles are a big indicator of status.

The thing is though, they also come with greater resposibilities. You have to know what you are doing. You have to be good at it. THAT’S what impresses people, the title just goes along with it. People look up to the authority that comes with competence and intelligence. If you have a title, but there is consensus you haven’t a clue how to do it, you’re much more likely to be disdained or mocked than accepted or admired. This is the main reason nepotists are universally scorned; they get their status and title based only on family pedigree rather than on merit.

Which brings us to Donald and Lara Trump. Let’s start with Lara. She has just become co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Her actual qualifications for the job are non-existent. She’s never demonstrated any level of aptitude for the job, she’s never held any real job within politics before and I’m not entirely sure she really understands what the job entails. However, she has two characteristics ¹ which are the reason she has been given the job; she’s Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and she has been vocal about allowing Trump to raid the RNC coffers for his own benefit.

I mean, think about that a second. The organization in charge of fundraising and building up the Republican Party nationally, in charge of finding, recruiting, training and positioning candidates for office across the country, has been handed over to a turnkey who will allow her father in law to raid the candidate funding to cover his legal bills. The previous person in the job, Ronna Romney McDaniel, who has basically done and said everything Donald Trump has asked except on this issue where she put her foot down, was kicked out because she understood how that severely damages the Republican Party as an institution and a national party. It’s practically waving a white flag and telling people “Don’t give us cash unless you want to pay for a billionaire’s legal obligations.” Lara Trump has never shown an inkling about understanding how to fundraise and grow a national fundraising base, and she doesn’t have the capacity to understand that what Donald Trump wants to do to the GOP is damaging long term. She’s incompetent for the job. The only reason she has it, or wanted it to begin with is that there is a level of status that goes with it.

Next, there’s Donald Trump himself. Back in 2015, I never thought he would run for President. Why? Because he was an extremely wealthy, esteemed public figure, his own boss at the top of a very large financial pyramid, who would never want to go through the public scrutiny¹ to have half of America and the world hate you for even running for a job that pays less than what Trump made in a week in 2014. He loved his name on stuff, especially Trump Tower; why jeopardize that? What I failed to take into account was Trump’s insatiable appetite for status. He became a founding owner of the USFL because the NFL wouldn’t OK his purchase of the Buffalo Bills in the 1980s, and he desperately wanted that status of being a sports franchise owner. He would call the Wall Street Journal and Forbes under a fake name (John Barron) to brag and boast about how wealthy Trump was so as to inflate his numbers. He’s a snarly, insecure little privileged trust fund baby who managed to bankrupt a casino.²

I’m not even sure he really even wanted the job, being a candidate was good enough for him. It’s what he really craves after all; the attention, being in front of the cameras and crowds, riling them up and seeing the hundreds and thousands hanging on his every word. He can say whatever inane thing comes to his mind and they eat it up. However, in 2016 he became the proverbial dog who caught the car; he actually won, requiring him to actually do the job.

And how did he do? By all accounts of those both in and out of government, he was utterly incompetent, with no intelligence about things a President needs to know, no sense of direction or goals that he really wanted to accomplish, no sense as how to motivate people to support his bills, and genuinely incompetent as to what the job actually entails. Scholars placed him in the bottom five of all Presidents, with most placing him dead last. Don’t just take my word for it, here are his cabinet members, who HE APPOINTED, talking about him:

His own Chief of Staff General Kelly has said he was incompetent and morally unfit for the job. His own Vice President won't endorse him for President.

Trump just wants the status of being the President.³ He doesn’t want to actually BE the President. He wants all the trappings that go along with the Presidency, without any of the responsibilities. That’s usually a recipe for disaster.

Why It Matters

You know why having competent people in particular positions matters? Because when things go wrong, as they always will, you want smart, competent people in positions to deal with it. You can’t just delegate the problems away, you need someone who is going to face these issues head on.

In Uvalde, the Police Force loved all the things that went along with being a cop. SWAT vehicles, AR-15s, the respect of the community. Until a deranged individual started shooting up a school. At that point, the police force became more like crowd control than those trying to protect the public, and they curled up in a cowardly ball until it was over. 19 schoolchildren died.

During the George W. Bush second term, one of the ways the GOP loved to cut government was by gutting FEMA. They just didn’t respect the program or what it actually did. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the appointed administrator Bush had in the job was a former head of the National Arabian Horse Association, Michael Brown. The Hurricane was one of the worst disasters in US history, and the response was abyssmal. Brown didn’t know how to do the job or what was entailed; he was a status figurehead bureaucrat. Bush, trying to reassure the public everything that could be done was being done, in a show ofpublic support, said “Heckuva Job Brownie.” The fallout to that statement, when the job was being done horribly, showed W was detatched from what was actually going on and he never recovered.

During President Trump’s first term, in the face of a national pandemic, Trump didn’t know what to do, and often suggested stupid, inane ideas (Bleach in peoples veins ? Nuking a hurricane?) He delegated everything relating to COVID to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx after it was apparent in his early statements that it would “just go away” wasnt going to happen. Those two individuals were competent and intellectually sound people to lead a pandemic response. When people became fed up with shutdowns, masks and closures, he turned on them and scapegoated them.

We don’t need figureheads in important government positions. We need people who actually want to do the jobs. This November, you actually have a choice between two people; one who wants to have the status of the job and one who actually wants to do the nuts and bolts of the work of the job. Choose the right one.

PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

One of my favorite all time books is a brief book called “The Peter Principle.” So what is the principle? It’s the idea that in a hierarchy, a person continues to get promoted until his level of incompetence. Sooner or later, they’ll get to a point where they can’t go any further, and its usually in a job they don’t do well.

It’s a great and fast read. Highly recommended.

A couple of Michael Lewis’ most recent books demonstrate the need to have competent people in jobs. These jobs aren’t glamorous or pay much so the people in them aren’t doing it for status, they’re doing them because there is a genuine need for smart and capable people in them and they fit the bill. The first one is about the general Civil Service and the important roles they play, titled “The Fifth Risk.”

The second was the follow up extension of this related to COVID Response and the Public Health officials at the forefront of it. It’s titled, “Premonition.”

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Going back to Medieval Europe, it was always a big deal when a King died with a successor underage and therefore subject to a regency. The reason being was that the corrupt nobles could then wield money and influence and further secure their positions against the crown and each other. The King wasn’t old enough to understand how he was being taken advantage of and was essentially just a figurehead; the regents didn’t care, so long as their financial position was enhanced as well. In everyone’s mind, ignorance is bliss and while the cat’s away the rats will play. One of the biggest examples of this was when Henry V died while fighting in France, leaving his son, a mere six months old at the time, as King. The lengthy regency that ensued eventually led to an incredibly weakened monarch, the War of the Roses to contest the crown and the rise of the House of Tudor.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Please note, that since public scrutiny amped up since he first became President, he’s been found guilty of fraud, liable for sexual assault and is no longer allowed from even running a business or charity in New York state.

2. How do you do that? There is a reason the saying is “The House always wins.” Apparently, that’s only true when it’s not Trump’s House.

3. At least that was the case; he may also want the ability to pardon himself to get him out of the many legal issues he currently is in.