In an article for The Atlantic published Sunday, analysts Peter Wehner and Robert P. Beschel Jr. argued that one fundamental flaw of President Donald Trump, which voters can no longer ignore, is his glaring incompetence, a shortcoming they said is more politically toxic than corruption or authoritarian tendencies.
The authors asserted that, in 2024, many Americans were willing to overlook Trump’s felony convictions or his role in the January 6 Capitol attack, as long as they believed he could govern effectively.
They cited a post-election poll by Democratic pollsters showing that, despite low confidence in his honesty, independents still believed Trump would “get things done”—valuing perceived effectiveness over democratic principles.
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They argued that incompetence has become painfully visible across sectors, from bungled economic and tariff policies to crumbling public services.
Polling shows a dramatic shift: only about one-quarter of Americans now say Trump’s policies have helped them, while half believe those policies have hurt them and most approval ratings have hovered well below a majority.
Wehner and Beschel argued that Trump has surrounded himself with officials who treat career civil servants as adversaries, driven by ideological zeal rather than governance. The result is reckless cost‑cutting and mismanagement panning out in misfires across disaster relief, healthcare innovation, and more.
To expose this failings, the duo recommended that Democrats pivot by humanizing the argument: using stories of real people — patients denied life‑saving research due to NIH cuts, families suffering from halted vaccine programs, unpreparedness for emerging pandemics — to bring home the damage of incompetent governance.
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“We believe they must tell voters that in all sorts of ways—the economy, health and health care, disaster relief—Trump is making their lives worse, not better. He and his administration are amateurs, inept and in over their head. They are entertainers and grifters, shock jocks and freaks. Whatever talents they may possess, mastery of governing is not one of them.”
They continued: “Trump is smashing up things on a scale that is almost unimaginable, and he seems completely untroubled by the daily hardships and widespread suffering he is leaving behind. And the president is hardly done. The pain and the body count will rise, and rise, and rise. It will be left to others to clean up the mess he has made,” they wrote.
“Some of the damage may be repaired with time; some will be irreparable. Democrats should say so. It’s their best path to defeating his movement, which is the only way for the healing to begin.”