I was driving home from work last night, and Philadelphia sports talk radio was debating the greatness of the New England Patriots (and for that matter, the San Antonio Spurs came up too, and fit this conversation just the same). Among the points being made against Tom Brady being the “greatest ever” was that he is “made by his system.” In other words, Brady is great because his team runs under a great system, and that environment elevates him. It felt like a really stupid argument to be having the day after the man set the record for Super Bowl championships for a starting QB.
We do know that environment is a big part of human development though, whether we are talking about the play of a professional quarterback, or a child in a poor, under performing school system. If you are in a positive environment, one that creates the conditions for success, you tend to thrive. There is very little class mobility in America, in no small part because of this. People born in successful situations succeed. People who aren’t, don’t. It’s sad, but it’s statistically true here, overall. I guess we could say this proves the ridiculous argument against Tom Brady- sort of.
When Tom Brady was selected in the 6th round of the NFL Draft, the Patriots were 0–2 all-time in Super Bowls. They are 5–2 since. Bill Belichick had championship rings, as an assistant coach, but none as a head coach. It is important to note that their “system” hadn’t worked before these people got together. The same could be said of Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs, who had really been a nothing franchise prior to that duo getting together. Yes, since then many players have come and gone through these franchises, and it may seem like they are all just interchangeable pieces on the board, but they aren’t. They all had to be athletes capable of playing their roles. You also needed an all-time supreme athlete like a Tom Brady or Tim Duncan to make everything happen, and a mad scientist mind at the helm who could manage those teams. The people in the equation really did matter in making the system work. Nick Saban’s not Nick Saban if he’s coaching a bunch of five foot, three-hundred pound round men, and not the Alabama Crimson Tide.
This brings me back to America, and the seeming belief of many in the public that our society will just keep working, because of the strength of our system. Americans are a fairly optimistic people, and tend to forget that government has to function for many of the things they take for granted to happen- the trash getting picked up, cops patrolling our neighborhoods, public schools to send our kids to, paved roads, safe food to eat, clean water to drink, Medicare and Social Security as we get older- all of these are government functions, functions that require a government that is functional. They may seem like basic “givens” to all of us, but that is a huge mistake. The reason we have a functional government is because we always elected functional people, from functional political parties, in part because our voters were smart enough to value some level of demonstrated competency and experience. Our “system” worked, much like the Patriots or Spurs, but it worked because of the pieces we put into it.
This brings me to Donald Trump and his White House. These people can’t turn on the lights. I wish I was just kidding there, but i’m not. Look, to be completely fair, nothing in Donald Trump’s background suggests he should know as much about running a White House as George H.W. Bush, or Harry Truman, or Teddy Roosevelt, or any of his 44 predecessors, all of whom had either government or military experience, and none of whom had run so anti-establishment as Trump. The thing is, Trump isn’t the only issue here. Melania Trump isn’t exactly Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton in her desire to use the First Lady’s office to further a policy plan, she’s currently arguing that negative stories about her are costing her the chance to make money from the job. You know though, that’s not even a big deal, but let’s look at the advisors. Kellyanne Conway is making up massacres to sell administration talking points. Jared Kushner is literally the President’s son-in-law, in the ultimate nepotism move since Camelot. And yet, neither of them stacks up at all to Steve Bannon- we literally have a white-nationalist nut serving on the National Security Council, and as the closest aide to the President himself. This line-up doesn’t resemble the ’27 Yankees of White Houses- they look more like the 2016 Cleveland Browns.
While many people are sounding the alarm about the intentions of this group, and talking about the intentional damage they want to do, I think we’re also missing the unintentional errors that tend to follow incompetent governments around. If the Flint Water Crisis shows us what local and state failure can look like, imagine it nationally. I think we have all heard the case at this point for how bad the intentional damage of this White House’s Muslim Ban, Obamacare Repeal, and de-regulating Wall Street banks, again, could be on our society. That’s being competent, but wrong on the policy though, which is to say that we think these people are going to do bad things, but do them according to their plans. What about the unintentional consequences of them just being a dumb group? In their failed Yemeni raid that left a Navy Seal, children, and civilians dead, we got a taste of how their incompetency can hurt. In their not talking to agencies involved, we saw how they can screw up using their Muslim Ban plans. Sometimes their bad plans and incompetency has already mixed, like when they sent their over matched Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, out to lie and say that 1.5 million people attended the inauguration, when any idiot with two eyes could tell they probably didn’t have a half-million actually show up. What happens when these people are simply incapable of executing their jobs, because none of them is really up to them? It might actually be even scarier than thinking about their ridiculous plans to take health insurance away from 21 million people, or start trade wars around the globe, or deport 12 million people, or build a wall, or block Muslims from entering our nation. That’s pretty awful, isn’t it?
You see, even the best laid systems in the world don’t protect us from incompetent people being put into them. You can joke about Julian Edelman seeming like an unlikely star wide receiver, but you couldn’t replace him with me and still win a Super Bowl. People had grievances with Hillary Clinton as a candidate, some legitimate and most not, but it would be far-fetched to believe that she would be struggling right now to turn on lights in the White House and keep aides from making up terrorist massacres that never happened. You might have thought Barack Obama’s White House was only decent at their jobs, but you had confidence that they were talking to the other parts of the government with whom they were working on implementing policies. The American political system has a wonderful track record of functioning despite stresses on the system, or even moral failures in it’s workings, but that’s not just because it’s a nice system.
Basically since the rise of Gingrich-ism in 1994, American Government has been slowly moving towards being dysfunctional. Newt and his supporters decided to start disregarding norms within Washington culture, and to start moving towards a world where political actors within the system could disrespect each other, the institutions they were in, and the system they worked within. It took just over two decades to go from that to the Washington of Donald Trump, and Americans don’t like it. Until we start identifying the people within our system who aren’t allowing it to work though, and removing them, we should expect that this is the new norm in Washington, that our great system will cease to operate at it’s best, and that the United States will not be able to claim “greatness” in the way that we have for generations before us. Our system won’t save us. Only our people can.
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