The Triumph of Incompetence

After Republicans' humiliating failure to pass Donald Trump and Paul Ryan's healthcare measure in the House of Representatives last Friday, Nicholas Kristof wrote a withering op-ed in the New York Times (link here) about how this stillbirth happened in part because of the President, who is, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

Consider this excerpt: "The Trump administration is increasingly showing itself to be breathtakingly incompetent, and that’s the real lesson of the collapse of the G.O.P. health care bill. The administration proved unable to organize its way out of a paper bag."

The piece then indicts Trump on his gross incompetence, his incessant bragging with utterly no delivery, and his penchant for selecting absolute sleazebags to populate his administration.

It closes on a chilling note: "Trump may be the one least interested in government or policy; he’s absorbed simply with himself. And what we’re seeing more clearly now is that he has crafted an administration in his own image: vain, narcissistic and dangerous."

The Trump administration may turn out to be a good news/bad news situation. The good news is he could be inept and corrupt but not do any lasting damage because he'll be a historically weak President.

But the bad news is he may turn on easier targets when his ineptitude prevents him from accomplishing any of his major promises. And one of those targets may be the LGBT community.

Although he's incompetent with policy, one has to presume he'll try to run for re-election. To do so, he needs allies, and that's where he needs easy victories.

In order to appease hardcore conservatives and evangelicals to shore up his base, he could attack some of their favorite targets: abortion, religion in government, LGBT rights, minority rights, and more.

That's why we need to remain vigilant even if he turns out to be very weak and achieving nothing of substance. Because weak politicians are often the most dangerous and autocratic.