It isn’t like there would be a ‘hard landing’ after escaping from the requirement to perpetuate the fantasies of the President.
Looking at the faces of members of the President’s cabinet as he takes off on another rhetorical tour through the weeds always makes me wonder what the absolute limits are for those who enable him. Think of all the pictures of the cabinet or business leaders lined up for a photo behind the President at the Resolute Desk or in the cabinet room. Most of the time those present seem to exhibit no obvious signs of embarrassment. Interestingly, except for J.D. Vance, few have also found reasons to be elsewhere.
Perhaps it is just me, but I see some signs of pain in the eyes of the Secretary of State whenever the President finds new ways to distance the United States from even more of its former friends and allies. Perhaps I’m wrong; maybe he is all in. But the photo above of Marco Rubio sitting on a couch in the Oval Office does not suggest a man relishing the role he has been asked to play. As with the others, there is an impression of non-engagement. I can’t imagine that Madeleine Albright, James Baker or John Kerry would have been so willing to keep their posts in order to serve an isolationist with contempt for America’s traditional friends. And being the Secretary of State during a period when fewer governments are welcoming must feel like something has gone wrong, especially when international cooperation is a virtual requirement for the position. It isn’t like there would be a ‘hard landing’ if he escaped to a position where he did not have to perpetuate the fantasies of the President.
To be sure, all of those who remain within the Presidential circle are ambitious weather vanes. And ambition can make us live with a lot of dross to keep a dream alive. That was my excuse for sticking it out for a sociopathic department chair who once promised to doom any chance I might have for a promotion. Luckily for me and what turned into a 47-year career, this person soon retired and expired. If this was a period when I wanted to move on, the idea also faded with my wife’s desire to stay in her local job. Personal circumstances often complicate the question of how far we will bend against from our values and goals.
We could easily extend this analysis to the scores of business and tech billionaires who are only too pleased to be photographed with the President. It’s a puzzle, since these folks could easily be elsewhere. Is their fiduciary duty to their shareholders really that vulnerable? Do they not sense the dissonance between their own productive work and the dithering in the Oval Office supports? Is there really that much of a transactional benefit to “playing nice” with an otherwise shallow leader? Doesn’t owning an important newspaper and the world’s biggest mega-store free Jeff Bezos from the need to show up for another enabling event?
The issue of self-induced obedience is not an obscure question. My guess is that half of the people I talk to about their work mention their immediate boss as a good reason to seek another position. Perhaps like the members of Trump’s cabinet, they stay because they sense that they are positioning themselves for a better final act in a newly reconfigured hierarchy. And then there are the mundane but sometimes overwhelming challenges of reorienting one’s personal or family life.
None of this should ignore the possibility that folks smiling behind this self-satisfied president actually share his vision. Never underestimate how a person’s cognitive elasticity can be stretched to blend to embrace even the most implausible fiction.
