The Conservative Worry

What if President Trump's revolution is not conservative?

Dan Gardner writes,

The glee and excitement when Trump announces yet another major appointment or policy crazier than the last is palpable. It’s also familiar if you know the history of revolutions: It’s the giddy stage in which the revolutionaries have seized control and realize they can do what they like, so they radicalize — their talk grows more extreme, their proposals more sweeping, until they are renaming cities and changing the calendar and erecting statues the size of buildings. It is France 1791. It is Russia 1919.

What it is not is conservative. In fact, it is the polar opposite of conservative. Donald Trump has far more in common with V.I. Lenin than Edmund Burke.

I understand that one quality Mr. Trump wants in his appointments is a desire to change something about how an agency operates. There is much that I would like to see changed. If our defense and intelligence agencies focus more on foreign adversaries and less on keeping up with the latest progressive fads, I will be pleased.

I have said that my number one issue is the deterioration of American higher education. That issue would not be addressed by the Democrats or by a member of the Republican establishment who wants to play it “safe” and be treated nicely by the New York Times.

But there is a question that I believe should have been asked of Mr. Trump’s choices to head agencies: do you have relevant experience running a large organization? Have you ever reached the level where your job was to manage managers?

In my business career, I myself never reached such a level. At Freddie Mac, I was very good at managing a small group of people doing risk analysis related to mortgages. I understood the theory involved in mortgage risk, and I knew enough about coding to realize that it was time to retire mainframe Fortran code and instead build models in C on personal computers.

In my own Web-based startup, I was good enough at managing a few Web developers. I knew enough HTML, Java, and SQL to understand problems from their perspective and to have reasonable expectations for their work.

But the layer below me consisted of technical workers. It did not consist of managers of technical workers. I never dealt with the problems that arise in managing managers.

To be a successful executive, you cannot just manage a handful of professionals. You have to manage managers. That is an different skill. You can be a good scientist, and be great at directing a small team of researchers, but you can be terrible at running a large scientific organization. You can be a good writer, and be great at using a few assistants, but you can be terrible at running a large media outfit.

To run the Defense Department

Which brings me to Pete Hegseth. He is supposed to run the Defense Department.

Here is a description of the problem of managing the Pentagon, taken from the opening scene of David Halberstam’s book, The Best and the Brightest. It is “A cold day in December,” shortly after the 1960 election, the month before the new President will be inaugurated. John Kennedy is soliciting advice from Robert Lovett, a senior member of previous Democratic Administrations.

Then they spoke of Defense. A glandular thing, Lovett said, a monstrosity. In Lovett’s day there had been 150 staffmen, now there were—oh, how many?—20,000; there were 14 people behind every man. An empire too great for any emperor. Kennedy asked what makes a good Secretary of Defense. “A healthy skepticism, a sense of values, and a sense of priorities,” Lovett answered. “That and a good President, and he can’t do much damage. Not that he can do much good, but he can’t do much damage.”

Lovett goes on to recommend an executive at Ford, Robert McNamara. When it came to Vietnam, things did not go well under Mr. McNamara. Perhaps for all his executive experience he was the wrong person to be Defense Secretary, or the wrong person to be inherited by President Johnson after Kennedy was assassinated. Or perhaps Mr. McNamara did about was well as anyone could have done, given the weak political culture of South Vietnam.

It is easy to imagine how things could go wrong for Mr. Hegseth. His lack of executive experience is likely to prove a serious handicap. He may have a hard time identifying a cadre of managers to help him seize the reins at Defense.

If you are a good executive, you have cultivated a group of managers. They trust you, and you trust them. When you move to a new firm, bringing some of them on board gives you traction when you start out.

I remember when a new executive was brought in to Freddie Mac at a high level in the IT department. My colleague Mary pointed out to me that he did not bring anyone with him from his former position. She saw that as a bad sign, suggesting that he had not earned much respect from his managers at his former employer. She was proven right, and he soon was bounced out of his position at Freddie Mac.

As an executive, you cannot be effective in a new organization without a cadre of loyal, competent managers to rely on. Pete Hegseth has never managed managers. I can picture him as a lost and lonely creature, wandering the halls of the Pentagon. Good luck to him. And good luck to us.

So far, Mr. Trump is mostly going for appointees who have strong ideas about what they are against. But I am afraid that they don’t know what they are getting into. Obtaining the behavior you want from a bureaucracy is an immense challenge, especially if this is your first experience trying it. I worry that the new Administration will move fast and break things—and not know how to fix them.