Trump's strength is also his greatest weakness

Sydney Morning Herald

25-04-2025

A leader who takes the initiative forces his opponents into a reactive mode. He forces his opponents to respond when they are not yet prepared. He destroys the enemy's planning by presenting them with situations they did not anticipate. The purpose of permanent offence is to produce in the minds of your opponents a sense of disorientation, defensiveness, disruption and mental overload. (Welcome to the modern Democratic Party.)
The leader who constantly initiates also understands that every moment you are not acting, you are closing off future options. You are allowing your opponents to shape the landscape in ways that will block alternative paths. Boyd, an ornery Air Force strategist, argued that aerial combat is not mainly about who has the most firepower but about who can manoeuvre with the greatest velocity and produce the most energy.
Trump's offensive style takes advantage of the unique weaknesses of America's existing leadership class. During his first term, social observer Chris Arnade joked that Trump's opponents were the kinds of kids who sat in the front row of class while Trump's supporters were the kids who sat at the back of the class. It's a gross generalisation but not entirely wrong.
The people who succeeded in the current meritocracy tend not to be spirited in the way Trump is spirited. The system weeds such people out and rewards those who can compliantly jump through the hoops their elders have put in front of them.
Members of the educated elite (guilty!) tend to operate by analysis, not instinct, which renders them slow-footed in comparison with the Trumps of the world. They tend to believe that if they say something or write something (ahem), they have done something. The system breeds a fear of failure that the more audacious Trump largely lacks. Such elites sometimes assume that if they can persuade themselves that they are morally superior, then that in itself constitutes victory; it's all they need to do.
Fatally, America now has an establishment that is ambivalent about being an establishment. Back in the day, those WASP blue bloods like Roosevelt were utterly confident in their right to rule, utterly confident they could handle whatever the future might throw at them. But since the 1960s, successive generations, raised on everything from Woodstock to hip-hop, have been taught that the establishment is bad. They have been taught, in the words of those famous Apple commercials, to celebrate 'the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels.'
When those people grew up and became the establishment – holding senior posts in law, government, universities, media, nonprofits and boardrooms – they became the kind of ambivalent souls who are unwilling to take their own side in a fight. They refuse to accept the fact that every society has a leadership class and that if you find yourself in it, your primary job is to defend its institutions, such as the Constitution, objective journalism and scientific research centres, when the big bad wolf comes to blow it all down. During this crisis, the deep state has been really disappointing. Where are all those Machiavellian House of Cards machinations that I was expecting?
When a revolutionary vanguard upends an establishment, the establishment rarely recovers. When the revolutionaries take a hammer to the ruling institutions, they often crumble like a plaster shell. Relatively few people were willing to fight for the czar once Vladimir Lenin came to town. When Trump took on the Republican establishment in 2016, it turned out there was nobody home.
So, I have three big questions. First, can the people who lead and defend America's institutions work up élan vital? Can they summon the morale to fight back against the Trumpian onslaught? Second, do they have as much clarity of purpose as the Trump people possess? Third, do they have a strategy?
My answer to these questions is that progress is being made.
On morale: Trump's behaviour has aroused great moral indignation. It has aroused in people's hearts a sense that something sacred is being trampled here — democracy, rule of law, intellectual freedom, compassion, pluralism and global exchange. These things are worth fighting for.
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On clarity of purpose: Trump's opponents have still not produced the kind of one-sentence mission statement that he produces – that the elites have betrayed us, so we must destroy them. But I think more people are realising that we are the beneficiaries of a precious inheritance. Our ancestors bequeathed to us a judicial system, great universities, compassionate aid organisations, great companies and scientific genius. My mission statement would be: America is great, and we will fight for what has made America great.
On strategy: Trump's greatest strength, his initiative, is his greatest weakness. Lacking any sense of prudence, he does not understand the difference between a risk and a gamble. He does daring and incredibly self-destructive stuff – now on a global scale. A revolutionary vanguard is only as strong as its weakest links, and the Trump administration is to weak links what the Rose Bowl parade is to flower petals.
I understand that Trump's opponents don't want to sit around passively waiting for him to implode. But they don't have to. Clausewitz argued that anybody who tries to do big things encounters 'friction': unpleasant surprises, tension in the ranks, unforced errors, unlucky breaks. Trump opponents' main job now is to maximise the amount of friction he faces as he tries to initiate his plans – lawsuits, leaks, noncooperation, non-deal-making, delays, getting inside his head with psychological warfare. He needs to wake up each day in such a storm of troubles that his cheeks get chapped.
Democrats will do the most good if they can stop sounding like Democrats for now, with all the tired rhetoric about the oligarchy and trickle-down economics. They will be at their best if they can defend the accomplishments of the past 250 years of American history – the Constitution, the postwar alliances, Medicare and Medicaid.
A passage from the 1909 edition of the British Army's Field Service Regulations seems like the right note to end on: 'Success in war depends more on moral than on physical qualities. Skill cannot compensate for want of courage, energy and determination.'