DailyJim: I believe the US presidency is a team sport, not an individual sport

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for July, Wednesday, July 17th, 2024. Today I want to talk about how I believe the U.S. Presidency is a team sport, not an individual sport. So, what do I mean by this? I think how a lot of people have been framing the elections is that it is Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. I do not believe it is Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. I believe it is Joe Biden's team versus Donald Trump's team.

There's a difference. So I believe when the president is elected and by the time that they take office, is they have to appoint, they're supposed to appoint somewhere around 4,000 people to positions. And from what I read, I think 1,200 of those have to go through Senate approval. Think about that, 4,000 people that they bring as political appointees to the executive branch. That's a lot of people. That's not just Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. If Joe Biden gets elected, His team brings 4,000 people, you know, whether they get approved, whether those 1,200 get approved, let's just say 4,000.

If Trump gets elected, his team brings a different 4,000 set of people. Okay.

If Biden is not the candidate and Harris is maybe the candidate or somebody else is the candidate, I imagine of those 4,000 people, most of them might be the same.

I don't know if they switch from Biden to Harris or to Buttigieg or to Newsom or whoever the heck it might be. I don't know if they would say, you know what we're going to do? Totally bring all new people in. I doubt it. I doubt it. I mean, it's actually really hard to find that many people that quickly to go into those positions. So I believe ahead of time, they probably think about this. They probably try to imagine who would go into those positions if we were to win. And I believe the Republican side is doing the same. I believe they maybe even have more of a formulated plan on who they would like to put into these positions. So when we talk about it as a uh joe biden versus donald trump one-on-one matchup as if they were playing a one-on-one tennis match or frankly more like a boxing match i don't think it, very accurately represents the office of the president and so a lot of people are saying joe biden should uh step down you should uh you know remove himself from the running and then and pass the torch on to somebody else. Okay, fine. But if he is merely the captain of the team, does it matter that much if he changes? What would happen if we looked at the election instead of a perspective of 1v1? We looked at it as two teams. Which competing teams do we want? Which team are we voting for? For me, I would rather vote for, I'll be honest, I'd rather vote for a team where Joe Biden was leading the team, or frankly, the team that he would bring to the office, than the team that Donald Trump is going to bring to the office. Now, other people may disagree with me. But the point is, what is the framing of the election? When we frame the election as a 1v1 matchup. Then we put all of our focus on the capabilities of the one player. And we forget about the 3,999 or so other people that are coming along with that player. So.

Maybe, maybe how we're framing it is actually quite short-sighted and it's missing most of the details. This would be my huge argument. I'm curious to hear if anyone, how people would respond to this because I've been thinking about this argument for a while and I don't see too many loopholes. Maybe the loophole would be, well, you know, but the president is the one at the top and they make the ultimate decisions. Yes, but they have a huge team of people who are doing all the background research, presenting the arguments and bringing it to them.

Depending on how, even in an organization that's very top down with the CEO, a lot of times the CEO I don't think is making that many of the decisions. Maybe they are, maybe they are. But I think organizations can run in very different ways where the COO, the CFO, the CTO, and all these people in the C-suite, the executive suite, often can make decisions as well. So I don't know if every minor decision needs to go all the way up to the top. Ironically, I would imagine in a Trump administration, more of those decisions would have to go to the top because I imagine he wants to micromanage more. That's just my guess.

But in other organizations or other with other people who are at the top or leading of the team I imagine there can be more delegation of responsibility and decision making I'm not sure that's that's something outside of my purview but the whole point of this is really to just step back and go okay is it a one versus one matchup one v one mano a mano matchup or is Is it one team versus another team? And if it's one team versus another team, how would that change how we look at the election? How would that change who we vote for? How would that change the pressure that they're putting on Joe Biden to resign? Would it get more? Would it get less? I imagine it would be a lot less. But for me, I want to vote for that team. Which team do I believe will lead the White House, lead the executive branch? To execute the laws faithfully and to try to bring the damn country back together. And not just the country, but also try to bring kind of the world together in different ways. You know, how can we start uniting instead of just talking about how everyone's so evil and dividing and nobody cares about us. So for me, that's what I'm thinking about now is what if we reframed it as, if we're going to frame it as a competition, what if we reframed it as a competition of teams instead of individuals?

All right. Talk to you all tomorrow.