Lazy Trump?

In my previous post, I suggested that Donald Trump is lazy. In this post I explain what I meant.

Donald Trump puts a lot of energy into things that he likes doing but neglects many important aspects of his job. The US presidency is a massive job, probably more than one person can do, even if the person is incredibly fit and energetic. It is unlikely that any eighty-year old will struggle to keep up.

A president has four important things to do.

1. Collect and analyse information about the issues about which he will have to make decisions.
2. Make decisions about key issues the nation is facing.
3. Communicate the decision effectively when it has been made.
4. Ensure that the decision is implemented. This is the hard part.

On top of this the president must campaign for the next election.

1. Trump does not do the first task very well. He obviously has plenty of advisors, but it seems that he is not keen about reading briefing papers prepared for him. I suspect he assumes that he already knows all that he needs to know. Consequently, he often makes bad decisions, because he did not understand the issue sufficiently well.

2. Trump is decisive when making decisions. And when his decisions are wrong, he corrects them, but it would be better if he got the decision right in the first place.

3. Trump is extremely good at communicating his decisions. The problem is that God can speak and it comes to be, but humans cannot speak things into being.

4. A president must rely on his team to implement the decisions that he has made. Trump has some very skilled people on his team, but they are people with strong views about what should be done, so they often will try to implement their own plans. Presidents have to be very active to ensure that their team implements their decisions.

   This is where Trump is lazy. He does not ensure that the team he has appointed carry out his decision. This was a problem in his first term. He negotiated a ground breaking agreement with North Korea, but then allowed John Bolton to undermine it and that agreement was never implemented. This problem will continue to undermine the effectiveness of his presidency.