Yesterday’s Oval Office shouting match – between the President and Vice President of the United States on the one side and a foreign head of state on the other – was unprecedented. It was certainly unprecedented as a performance that anyone anywhere who chooses to see it, can see. It was yet another apparent astonishment in a series of apparent astonishments – all of which materialized in the last one month and one week.
The changes wrought by Donald Trump have been, no doubt about it, dizzying. In a stunningly short period of time, he imprinted himself not just on American politics but on world politics. Never in America – and not all that often anyplace else – has one leader done so much so fast to redraw the landscape not merely in minor ways but in major ones.
No need for me to summarize what Times columnist Peter Baker already did. Here’s what he wrote about Trump’s revision of the national order:
The news media is being pressured. Lawmakers have been tamed. Career officials deemed disloyal are being fired. Prosecutors … are targeting perceived [Trump] adversaries and dropping cases against allies or others who do his bidding. Billionaire tycoons who once considered themselves masters of the universe are prostrating themselves before him. Judges [who block him] are being threatened with impeachment. The uniformed military … has now been purged of its highest- ranking officers and lawyers. And a president who calls himself “the king,” ostensibly in jest, is [suggesting] that he may try to stay in power beyond the limits of the Constitution.
And here’s what Baker wrote about Trump’s revision of international order:
Mr. Trump this week had the United Nations vote against a …resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine….Among the countries that Mr. Trump joined in siding with Russia? North Korea, Belarus, and Sudan. Those who stood against? Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and most of the rest of the world. It would be hard to think of a starker demonstration of how radically Mr. Trump is recalibrating America’s place in the world after barely a month back in office. He is positioning the United States in the camp of the globe’s chief rogue states in opposition to the countries that have been American’s best friends since World War II or before.
What to make of what’s happened – what’s happened so fast it’s difficult to make sense of it? To answer the question, I turn once again to the leadership system. Leadership is not, as I often observe, about single individuals. About leaders in high places. Instead, leadership is a system with three parts, each of which is equally important: 1) leaders; 2) followers; and 3) contexts.
Why does this matter? Because it explains the otherwise inexplicable. It deciphers the otherwise indecipherable.
Here’s the truth of it. Donald Trump, the leader, is behaving in ways that were altogether predictable. First, as I spelled out in my last book, unless it is stopped, bad leadership always, without exception, gets worse. Second, Trump’s politics, policies, selections and decisions all were foretold by Trump himself. Trump’s second presidential term is nothing other than him doing what he said he would do.
Further, Trump’s followers are behaving in ways that were altogether predictable. His tribe, MAGA admirers and supporters, remain on board. And his team – acolytes who include but are not limited to Republican members of Congress and members of the Trump administration – remains abjectly loyal.
What then was not predictable? We the American people knew, or we should have known what we were getting when we reelected Trump president. And we the American people knew, or we should have known the stuff of which we were made. Specifically, more than half the American electorate voted for Trump for president. Virtually every prominent Republican remains as they were before, under Trump’s thumb. And leaders in other places, such as in American business, higher education, and the media are as they usually are, scared to speak truth to power.
The leader then was known. And so were the followers. What we did not however know was the context. We did not understand how quickly and nearly effortlessly America’s over two-hundred-year-old Constitutional system would buckle. How frail it was, how vulnerable to a single strongman and his slavish, silent followers. How dependent the United States of America has always been and manfiestly still is not so much on the division of powers, or on checks and balances, or on the rule of law, as it is on men and women of democratic disposition and good enough character.
It’s been an awakening as rude as sudden.