On a rainy Friday while I am sipping a cup of reheated coffee I am thinking about incumbent turnover in Cheeto's administration. Yesterday's indictment of Steve Bannon continues a legacy of embarrassment for the President and continues to reflect on his inability to hire and retain people of quality to run our government.
While Cheeto was running for president he boasted that he would "surround myself only with the best and most serious people" -- adding: "We want top-of-the-line professionals." I guess we can file this under "bullshit" along with "Mexico will pay for the wall, I will be known as the "jobs President, I'll eliminate the deficit, we will replace Obama care with a plan that is better and cheaper, and a dozen other drug-induced promises. The turnover among the "best and most serious people" is nothing short of astounding. As of this month, there has been an 89% turnover on his "A" team - you read that correctly, 89%. BTW, the turnover does not count multiple turnovers of the same position if there were multiple incumbents like his Chief of Staff. In this latter category of multiple turnovers, the turnover is 40%, a pretty amazing number in itself.
Over the years as I have had a chance to observe and work with many different organizations and companies, and one of the observations I noted was that a key characteristics that made sound and well-run organizations was 'stability.' Those organizations who had people in jobs for longer periods tended to run well for obvious reasons, e.g., incumbents knew their jobs, they had seen and dealt with issues previously, they were well connected, etc. When there is constant 'churn' in an organization, you have a scenario where incumbents are still learning their jobs or may be on their way out the door, either case is not particularly healthy for an efficient team. In the interest of brevity, I am skipping over the whole notion of the background and qualifications of the incumbent where Cheeto's record is less than notable in that regard.
Getting back to the notion of top-of-the-line professionals, independent of turnover, Bannon's indictment highlights the corrupt nature of Cheeto's management style. Bannon is the 7th associate indicted or convicted from his team. You know all the characters by now, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, George Papadopolus, and now Steve Bannon. Quite a rogues gallery of the best and most professional, I would say. You can skip over the part where Cheeto says, "he barely knew any of them."
I am thinking it will be wonderful when we have a 100% turnover of the entire group of 'top-of- the-line professionals come January 2021. Maybe the new found stability can bring us back to the time when we knew was responsible for what activity in the government and they remained in the job long enough to do it right - at least by government standards.
On that note, I am having more coffee and a fresh bagel.