The Delegator-In-Chief
When a President hands over too much power to this staff, it’s not always a good thing
In the fall of 1986, Ronald Reagan was in the second term of his presidency. He had begun the reshaping of the Supreme Court, a sea change that would solidify its politicization and define it in terms of liberal and conservative. He had begun the process of negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev on arms reduction. And he had a tremendous public relations moment that summer, speaking at the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty. “We dare to hope too that we’ll understand our work can never be truly done until every man, woman, and child shares in our gift, in our hope, and stands with us in the light of liberty,” the president said at the dedication, “the light that, tonight, will shortly cast its glow upon her, as it has upon us for two centuries, keeping faith with a dream of long ago and guiding millions still to a future of peace and freedom.” In this role, Reagan was performing the role he cherished most: the spokesperson for the “shining city on a hill”.
Critics charged that the president was more comfortable in this role than with the minutiae involved with being the Chief Executive. It was not a concept that the President shied away from, nor was it one that everyone cast a negative light upon. In September of 1986, Fortune Magazine did a cover story that emphasized Reagan’s “hands-off” style of management. “I believe that you surround yourself with the best people you can find”, he said “delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the overall policy that you’ve decided upon is being carried out.” While this sounds like, it may not be the type of management skills we expect from the man designated as the most powerful man in the free world. Men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman made sure that those who worked for them did not have the longest of leashes. “The Buck Stops Here”, said the sign on Mr. Truman’s desk on the Oval Office.
Now, the man whom has been elected our nation’s forty-fifth president has a management style that can be described as very similar. Like Ronald Reagan, it is a style where personal charisma carries the day. It is one that gives the impression of being hands-on and aggressive through vernacular more than doctrine, at least on the surface. It is an aggression that served Donald J. Trump well in the primaries, an aggression that was fully on display at the many rallies during the campaign, and one that he attempted to use during the debates with his opponent, Hillary Clinton. But it was one that many pundits believed at the time that, while great for television, would give way on election day to the belief that the presidency requires a more sober and steady hand, one that Secretary Clinton seemed to represent. That is, until the results came in, and Mr. Trump had secured the Presidency.
But now, the man who preached aggression in his business affairs and on the campaign trail appears to lack such aggression when it comes to the absorption of information, and the realization of the daily grind of the office. Mr. Trump has been accused of ignoring, if not outright skipping, his daily intelligence briefs, and not being afraid to admit so. “I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years”, he said in an interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. “…these are very good people that are giving me the briefings. And I say, ‘If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I’m available on one minute’s notice.’” In this way, Trump is acting like a CEO would: what he feels would be “repeat information” would waste his time and slow down what he believes would be his focus on the bigger picture.
As President Trump forms his cabinet, his choices reflect a man who delegates authority to underlings who he trust will be able to execute his philosophies and mission statement without needing constant support. People with “take-charge” philosophies to reflect his own. General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense is a man who knows the machinations of the armed forces without losing his appeal as a common grunt. Should he choose ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, it would be the choice of a man who has experience running a large organization, skills that can be useful in handling the bureaucracy of foreign affairs. And, they represent men who share the President-Elect’s beliefs in business and government, and can carry out his ideas without day-to-day input. Thus, Trump can delegate authority and trust that his ideas are being carried out without micro-management.
But there is a danger in allowing authority to be delegated too much, and not have a full hands-on approach. By the fall of 1986, the Reagan Administration had been involved for over 18 months on a campaign kept hidden from both the public and a Democratic congress. It began with secret negotiation with the Iranian government to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages held throughout the Middle East. The result of these negotiations would be a surplus of illegal funds that would be used to fund an uprising in the Central American country of Nicaragua against its marxist-leaning government. The President saw two goals that represented what he saw as positive for his world views, the release of hostages in the Middle East and the support of what he saw as courageous rebels fighting against tyranny in Nicaragua. In doing this, Reagan gave large amounts of leeway to individuals in his government, such as CIA director William Casey, National Security adviser John Poindexter, and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, to accomplish these goals without intense scrutiny. If the ends were being completed successfully, that is all that mattered. How much the President was kept out of the loop, intentionally or not, remains in question.
It would end soon after the President and his management style as lauded in Fortune. What was first rumor coming out of the Middle East exploded with the capture of CIA operative Eugene Hasenfus, shot down over Nicaragua. The Administration went into denial at the start until, realizing that the truth would come out, got on top of situation and confirmed both the arms deal and the redistribution of funds to the Contras. A subsequent congressional hearing and an independent investigation led by John Tower would bring the hands-off approach into question, if not outright repudiation. Although the President was not accused with any wrong-doing, the conclusions reached by investigators greatly criticized the lack of oversight given to the President’s advisors. But the majority of the blame was placed on Reagan’s underlings, and not directly on Mr. Reagan himself. His presidency did survive and, with the publicity generated by his speech at the Berlin Wall and subsequent arms deal with the Soviet Union, the President’s reputation stayed intact.
We now have a situation where the incoming President has expressed a lack of interest in the day-to-day machinations of his office. Daily briefings can be skipped if new information is redundant; the First Lady has stated she would like to stay in their New York residence, Trump Tower. Even campaign promises such as the construction of a physical wall and the prosecution of Secretary Clinton for alleged mishandling of e-mails relating to Benghazi have fallen on the wayside, or at least.
In a post 9-11 word, intelligence remains more important than ever. But now the tone being set by the future Trump Administration is more a Fortune 500 firm than a government: put the right (or perceived to be right) people in the right position, give them a long leash to execute the wishes of the Chief Executive, either directly or indirectly, and, as Ronald Reagan said, “don’t intefere”. But when the people carrying out the wishes of the Chief Executive may not have the experience required to do so in the political sphere, they may decide to think outside the box in their approach, and in so doing bring harm to the foreign policy of the United States and our standing in the world. The question then becomes, what would happen if President Trump, deciding that he does not need daily intelligence, gives the authority to his underlings to do whatever they choose, and it comes back to haunt both him and the country, as it almost did thirty years ago?
