Ezra Klein’s analysis in NY Times cuts through the noise to explain what we’re actually witnessing: not crisis management, but crisis generation as governing philosophy. The Bannon playbook (move fast, flood the zone, overwhelm attention) worked until it didn’t. Now the administration drowns in its own turbulence.
I try not to get into the daily news thrash from Trumpistan, but I occasionally find articles that elevate above the din and provide insight. This is one of them.
Ezra Klein in New York Times writes:
The strategy of the Trump administration over the last year has been to move so fast, to do so much, that the opposition could never find its footing. This was Bannon’s insight, and it was real: Attention is limited. The media, the opposition, the electorate — they can only focus on so much. Overwhelm their capacity for attention and you overwhelm their capacity to think, organize and oppose.
But what you are doing to the opposition you are also doing to yourself. “It is a strategy that forces you into overreach,” I wrote last year. “To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself.” And that is what happened. The Trump administration is overwhelmed — by its own violence, its own cruelty, its own lies, its own chaos. There is nothing unusual about a presidency being overwhelmed by crises. What is unusual about the Trump administration is that it has created those crises itself. …
… Trump appears to be trying to course correct, but he has neither the discipline nor the personnel to truly change his presidency’s direction. This administration is a reflection of who the president is and what he wants. This White House is not beset by crises. This White House is the crisis.