Conventional wisdom and the bulk of the political chattering classes seem to be appalled by the majority of President-elect Trump’s high level appointments. Objections run the gamut from values, personal lives, and prior experience to the claimed lack of experience and expertise on the part of the appointee regarding the office to which he (mostly) was nominated.
Trump ran a campaign which promised voters he was going to change Washington’s ways. His appointments may just do that – but not in the way that the media and the pundit class predict. Trump remembers something most of us forget: not only did Richard Nixon alter world views by embracing China, he also gave serious consideration to a guaranteed basic income for all and created the EPA and OSHA. All changed Washington’s ways – none was predictable by the pundits.
Trigger warning: if you voted FOR Hillary Clinton (and NOT against Trump) what follows may greatly upset you.
The past seven decades since the end of World War II have seen an explosion of government throughout the United States. Indeed, in many urban centers the government is among the top three employers. Those who populate that government (its employees and its many supplicants) have had decades to speak with one another, lobby with one another, and develop a common world-view. Those who frame the world differently are rejected. Policy differences are about goals and methods, but not about base underlying assumptions regarding the world.
Trump is appointing people who do NOT share that world view. That difference may prove to be his greatest gift to America. (My liberal friends or former friends please recover from keeling over and retching, the argument which follows is cogent and from your own playbook.)
The noted French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu coined the term “habitus” to describe the socialized norms or tendencies that 1) guide our behavior and thinking, 2) are either embodied in the environment or deeply embedded in our thought patterns, and 3) we take for granted as “given” when we attempt to make sense of the world. Habitus takes the form of lasting dispositions or structured propensities to think, feel and act in ways which then guide us in our behavior, thoughts, and emotions. Government has its own habitus.
Habitus allows us to take many things for granted. Most of these “taken for granted” things are expressed in the form of black boxes (no not the airplane kind). Black boxes are a tool we use to simplify the world. This kind of black box is a logical "as-if" entity where we observe inputs and outputs, but what goes on in the middle is hidden (i.e. unknown to the observer).
As Jim March told us, " the mind cannot cope directly with the complexity of the world. Rather, we construct a simplified mental model of reality and then work with this model. … but this model is not always well adapted to the requirements of the real world." Black boxes are one form of our simple model. They work by hiding processes from us. Instead we recognize some input (the beginning) and some output (the end). If we recognize the black box at all, we give a label to the idea that if x then y. That label tells us nothing about how x becomes y, just that if x then y.
Black boxes are an integral part of our habitus. Bourdieu often used sports metaphors when talking about the habitus, often referring to it as a “feel for the game.” Just like a skilled baseball player “just knows” when to swing at a 90-miles-per-hour fastball without consciously thinking about it, each of us has an embodied type of “feel” for the situations or “games” we regularly find ourselves in. In familiar situations, our “ingrained in our heads” habitus allows us to successfully navigate the environment. The thing about the habitus, Bourdieu often noted, was that it was so ingrained that people often mistook the feel for the game as natural, god-given, and unchanging. The result is that any black box which has become part of our habitus is accepted ‘as is’ without any probing as to the hidden process within. Great when they work. Dangerous when they don’t.
Because we make use of our black boxes to navigate the world, we attribute success to them, whether or not it was deserved. As with any other black box, we do not seek to probe or understand processes, we just accept what we perceive to be results. The athletes with their good luck charms and the businessmen with $1000 shoes and “power suits” accept a black box of wear this or hold that and good things happen.
Government bureaucrats are no different. They deal with the world using the black boxes of regulations and ideas which have served them well to date. Of course we should regulate climate change -- regardless of the costs imposed and regardless of whether what we are regulating will actually make a meaningful difference. It is important to appear to be doing “the right thing” as defined by the black boxes and the habitus. Questions do not get asked. Simplifications and shortcuts are assumed to be “true.” If an idea is in the habitus, there is no need to break open its black box and ask how or why. Simple ideas are not probed for second and third order effects. Orwell called this groupthink. Cognitive scientists call it “bias.”
Trump wants to break that bias. We should all be grateful. (Another set of retching from my liberal colleagues.) Unchallenged biases lead to poor decisions. Remember the “weapons of mass destruction” which pervaded Iraq? Until they didn’t? $3 trillion later.
The elites which Trump rallied against (and yes which in fact he may himself be part of) hold a worldview which is very close to that of the government bureaucrats. So does most of the media. Their habitus includes the simple idea that markets are “bad” because in markets everything is a transaction and nothing is a relationship. (Indeed, Trump’s career is the epitome of the idea that markets favor transactions over relationships.) But, society flourishes on relationships – thus, it is the role of government to make sure relationships thrive.
But, is it? What if it is the role of each of us? Or of our communities? If we can no longer rely on the idea that the government will step in and “look out for us,” what will we do in response? The government habitus has no answer. This kind of question is outside its world-view. But, much of the electorate who made Trump President already believes the government fails to step in and look out for them. They believe the government looks out for “others.” That belief says that government has to change.
What Trump has done is to introduce questioning back into the governmental process. His appointees are not going to rubber stamp or sign what is presented to them by the bureaucracy. Instead they will ask why? And then ask for information about tradeoffs and alternatives and higher order impacts. In effect by appointing office holders with a different world view, from a different habitus, Trump has brought back a liberal darling: zero-based budgeting. Programs and proposals will need to be justified starting with the idea that they do not already exist. Incrementalism is out. Questioning de novo is in.
This comes with risks of course. Programs do exist and if they cannot be justified de novo then someone needs to work out how to dismantle them – keeping in mind second and higher order effects. We already see this. You cannot just “repeal” ObamaCare – 20 million people might lose insurance and access to healthcare. You cannot just declare “Taiwan is an independent country;” the global repercussions might be horrid.
By appointing people whose worldviews differ from the agencies they are to lead, Trump is restoring the tool of questioning to the role of leadership. He is attacking the blackness of the black boxes and demanding that their hidden processes be revealed and examined.
President-elect Trump is removing the “taken for grantedness” from the government’s habitus.
It is unnerving. It is unpredictable. It is risky.
But it is long overdue.
We should be grateful.