New York and Washington are separated by a little over 200 miles as the crow flies. But they are worlds apart.
New York City is ruled by a results-oriented business mentality. Whether you’re talking about a hostile corporate takeover, an eye-popping magazine cover, or a path through cross-town traffic, you can imagine the boss barking, “Get it, and I don’t care how you do it.”
The best managers don’t micromanage. They leave room for individual initiative and creativity to achieve the desired result.
This approach has led New York characters and enterprises to command the pinnacles of finance, media and the creative arts.
Washington, on the other hand, is ruled by the bureaucrat’s mentality. Armies of paper pushers churn out reams of regulations covering ever-expanding realms of human activity with the cement of specific rules citizens must follow to the letter.
Tell a bureaucrat his rules aren’t producing cleaner air, healthier food or fewer car accidents, and you can hear the response, “But did you follow the rules? That’s what’s important.”
This is the CYA culture where what matters is adhering to procedure rather than getting results.
World War II gave the Greatest Generation first-hand experience with the mode of thought and action, or no-think and inaction, that produced the cautionary tale of Capt. Rochefort and informed the adventures of Sgt. Bilko.
But a new generation (or two) came along. The bureaucratic mindset has grown more entrenched in our society as large swathes of American business came to be dominated by the finance and marketing departments of depersonalized giant corporations rather than swashbuckling empire builders like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
Donald Trump is a New York businessman cut from the same cloth as those titans of an earlier era, the men who made America the greatest economic power in history.
While Washington academics, ideologues and bureaucrats ponder theory and process, Trump wants results: Make America Great Again.
And by setting an unmistakable goal, he takes us a long way toward achieving it.
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