This is part one in a six-part correspondence series between Grant Brooks and me. I will be writing parts one, three, and five, while Brooks will be writing parts two, four, and six on his substack. As our letters are published, links will be added to this intro. We will release letters each Monday, giving everyone time to mull over the letter, while keeping a steady tempo. Grant and I decided to give this a try in an effort to expose our respective audiences to related, but different, material, and to rekindle the old art of epistolatory exchange. Be it the letters of Saint Paul, Cicero, or the Jefferson-Adams correspondence, epistolatory exchange has been a privileged form of communication in the Western tradition, and it is time it made a resurgence. If this exchange goes well, expect to see more letters and other authors.
Grant,
In recent days there has been much talk about Donald Trump announcing his bid for the presidency, the possibility of Ron DeSantis running (which is being pushed hard by the algorithms), and the most entertaining of all, Kanye West/Ye’s announcement that he is also running in 2024, with Milo Yiannopoulos as his campaign manager. Seeing Milo crop up again, someone I haven’t seen in years, let alone next to Kanye is, well, I am still processing it, and trying to figure out what is going on. Yet, although it is dominating many people’s attention, I fear that the debates over who should be the nominee, be it Trump, DeSantis, or Kanye, are missing the mark. Missing the mark because the very discussion sounds like 2016 never happened.
When the potential nominees are weighed against each other, people talk about them as if Trump, DeSantis, or Kanye would be the one running things. Now, I am not saying that all politicians are puppets that have no say, nor am I making the NRx claim that no matter how great a politician is, The Cathedral will always win. Rather, I take the lesson of 2016 to be that middle managers have more power than the politicians they serve, and the real discussion should be about installing our middle managers. By “middle managers”, I mean staffers, donors junior level department heads, and policy wonks. When Trump was elected to the presidency, he quickly found that The Executive Branch, let alone Congress, did not want to cooperate with him. Who stopped Trump? Middle management. Those few times Trump was able to cooperate with Congress, his staffers convinced him to sign a tax code that raised the tax burden on his base, but cut the taxes of Hillary’s donors. Appraising Trump’s Executive Orders, we have to give credit, or blame, to the policy wonks. However smart Trump might be at business, presidents do not write their own executive orders, though they may have given it its tenor, their personal policy wonk team carefully constructs the document to be as effective as possible, which means having the ability to hold up in court.
Whether Trump, DeSantis or Kanye wins the nomination, it will not matter unless they are surrounded by a good staff, has a solid policy and legal wonk on speed dial, and a campaign funded by people friendly to American. Unless these middle managerial positions are filled by the right people, the candidate does not matter. Should we effect America’s course, we need to encourage talented people to fill these rolls. This, I take it, was the lesson of 2016, and it would do us well to remember, and act on it.
Anyways, that is enough about what I think about the matter. Tell me Grant, what do you think the lesson of 2016 was? What would learning from that lesson look like today? I hope all is well.
Yours,
Rose