THE DISTRESSING DENIGRATION OF EXPERTS AND EXPERTISE . . . AND A PREDICTION

NOVEMBER 15, 2024 – Our culture has long been “anti-elitist” but Trump’s recent cabinet appointments signal that we’re deep into territory hostile toward experts and expertise, with growing antipathy toward government and governance.

Experts aren’t always right and non-experts aren’t always wrong, but context is everything. Back in the distant past when I managed a division of corporate trust that was in the business of serving as indenture trustee for high-yield (“junk”) bond issues, I needed to hire a specialized salesperson—someone who could call on large New York investment banks and the white shoe law firms that represented them and sell them on our services. It was assumed by people in my group that we needed to find someone with “expertise”; someone intimately familiar with the role of a indenture trustee and who also knew the arcane market and our competition (mostly New York-based trustee-banks). I myself was sold on this approach—searching for and hiring an “expert.” We eventually found one—at a competitor—and “stole” him away.

For a variety of reasons, he didn’t work out. To replace him, I decided to try a different tack: hiring a “non-expert” who, nevertheless, was a good salesman. Among the applicants was a guy who for a long time had been very successful selling . . . cardboard boxes. I was intrigued and asked to meet him. I wanted to know how a person approached selling something as commonplace as cardboard containers.

“So,” I said, after dispensing with a few opening questions, “how does a person go about selling cardboard boxes?”

“You learn how to turn them into origami projects.” he said. “Soon you can look like a magician, and believe me, in the world of cardboard, you can be a standout; someone purchasing agents won’t forget.”

If he might be a talented salesman, I thought, he knew absolutely nothing about high-yield indenture trusteeships, New York investment bankers or high-end New York law firms. He was the quintessential non-expert. But he’d sold me on the idea that in short order he could learn what he needed to know. I hired him and he was soon hitting the ball out of the park.

From that experience I learned that yes, a non-expert can succeed, and perhaps because someone lacking expertise isn’t inhibited by accepted norms and the assumptive barriers that grow out of “business as usual.” Our cardboard box guy was like a breath of fresh air to decision-makers (buyers of our services) accustomed to the “same-old, same-old” approaches of our competition.

In filling other positions I took this same approach—identifying traits and experience that could be adapted successfully to a completely different context. In every case, “non-experts” outperformed the “experts.”

Reliance on “non-experts,” however, has its limits. When boarding a plane, for example, we assume that the flight crew are “experts” with countless hours of training and experience; that the air traffic controllers with whom the pilot and co-pilot will be communicating are also “experts.” Cardboard manipulation is not analogous to aerodynamics.

Likewise, when a doctor prescribes a treatment regime for a terrifying disease, you want to ensure that the person who appears to be a good doc isn’t a bad quack.

Or after the usher has shown you and your spouse to your seats for a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica by the New York Phil, trust me, you don’t want to be informed that kids from the Morristown (NJ) High orchestra will be subbing for all the principal players and a college hockey star (with lots of ice-time in front of roaring fans) will be standing in for Gustavo Dudamel.

And if you’ve paid big bucks for a Vikings/Packers game in USBank Stadium, you want to see the A-teams on the field, not B-squad players from high schools that by chance have adopted NFL names, logos and colors (in blatant violation of trademark rights).

Similarly, when your high-end efficiency furnace quits in the dead of winter, you don’t call your lawn and garden guy. You call . . . an expert who knows how to repair furnaces.

So . . . when it comes to government and governance why do we lower our standards so easily and drastically? Starting with the office of president itself, an executive position that lords over millions of government workers and disburses nearly $7 trillion dollars a year, how is it that our chief measure of qualification is “What are ya gonna do about the price of bread at my local store?”—especially considering the nominal influence that the office, with all its power, has over the price of bread . . . anywhere.

Then move on to three of the most critical cabinet positions—Secretary of Defense, Attorney General and Health and Human Services.

To cite Hegseth’s national guard service as his qualification for running the Pentagon with its three million employees, $840 billion annual budget and global reach is about as ludicrous as suggesting that because someone worked as a teller at a community bank, they’re qualified to serve as Chairperson of the Federal Reserve Board. It takes little imagination or experience to know intuitively that going from teller to Fed Board chair or national guardsman/media provocateur to Secretary of Defense is . . . indefensible.

Now enter Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Really now. Not only does he have zero experience as a prosecutor, he’s hardly practiced any kind of law—certainly not enough to qualify him to rule over 112,000 employees, including 93 district attorneys, under whom there are innumerable assistant D.A.s. Nor has he ever managed a group larger than his congressional staff. His key and patently dubious qualification, it turns out, is that he was investigated by the Department of Justice for sexual misconduct. Having a “shock-mouth” is not a qualification but just the opposite.

Then there’s RFK, Jr. to be placed in charge of Health and Human Services, with its 80,000 employees and $144.3 billion annual discretionary budget and $1.7 trillion annual mandatory budget. What qualifies this guy to lead such a critical agency that touches directly 10s of millions of Americans? He’s neither a scientist nor trained in medicine nor does he have any large-scale executive experience.

Even if the cynical agenda of Trump, his Republican sycophants, and the “DOGE” headed by two filthy rich guys without portfolio  is to blow-up HHS, DOJ, DOD and the rest of the federal government, expertise in munitions is required. If people like Hegseth, Gaetz, and RFK, Jr. know how to light a fuse by moving their jaws, none of these three has a clue as to where and how to place the sticks of TNT to do the work that is expected of them.

But by putting the above-named non-experts and other unqualified people in various cockpits of government, we’ll likely see lots of plane crashes across the agency landscapes of the federal government. These crashes will have bad impacts on millions of Americans, and rather than saving $2 trillion (according to projections by the mad scientist Musk), the clean-up will impose inestimable costs on taxpayers.

All of which should give people pause. For 73 million voters, good character in a president no longer counts, and bad character no longer matters. We—all of us—thus have the leader they elected; one for whom nothing in his curriculum vitae suggests that good character ever counted or that bad character ever mattered. In consequence, we can expect four years of a wrecking-ball approach to government, as well as to governance. Sadly, there will be serious adverse consequences, only some of which we can now predict.

What we can predict is that given how fickle many voters are—See Obama voters who turned to Trump in 2016; Biden voters who voted for Trump in 2024—by 2026 enough of the 73 million will be sufficiently disenchanted to put Democrats in charge of the House, effectively stopping the Trump legislative agenda thereafter.

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson