Trump: Why no, I'd rather not have a poor person as my economic advisor

One of the dopiest complaints a president will ever get is not all that surprising given the tenor of the times: How dare you appoint a billionaire as your economic advisor? That one actually got fired at President Trump yesterday in reference to his choice of Gary Cohn, the billionaire former president of Goldman Sachs, to advise him on economic policy. Now, you could cite some issues with Cohn, one of them being he has a reputation for not being all that conservative on economic policy. But that's not the complaint of the aggrieved masses. The complaint is that he's a high-powered billionaire, and how dare Trump seek his advice? Now you do understand, I would hope, that the purpose of economic policy is to create circumstances that promote prosperity. One might consider it fairly obvious that you're better off getting advice from someone who's achieved some prosperity, and knows a little something about how this is done. That will help the president develop policies that might assist others in reaching prosperity.

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But some people have a hard time understanding this for whatever reason, so the president explained it in very Trumpian terms:

President Donald Trump defended his appointment of several billionaires—including the former President of Goldman Sachs—to his Cabinet and senior posts at a 2020 election campaign rally in Iowa Wednesday. “In those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?” Trump said during the rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, referring mainly to economic positions. Trump defended his pick of economic adviser Gary Cohn, who was president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2017. Cohn became a senior adviser despite Trump’s attacks on his rival Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election for getting paid for speaking gigs at the investment bank. During the primaries, Trump accused the bank of having “total control” over his rival Republican Ted Cruz, “just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.” On Wednesday, Trump’s attitude was different. “When you get the President of Goldman Sachs,” he said, “this is the President of Goldman Sachs! Smart! Having him represent us, he went from massive paydays to peanuts. The peanuts, the little tiny…These are people that are great, brilliant business minds.”

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How media bias works

First a word about how media bias works. Often it takes the form of a single word choice, as it does here with the use of "defended" twice in the first three paragraphs. What is inherently wrong with appointing billionaires to your cabinet? Every president has done so, including Barack Obama. But the Newsweek writer who reported this story considers it inherently awful, so when Trump talks about why this was a good thing to do, the writer uses "defended" as if Trump was on trial for a crime. Now, about the "poor person" quote: This is the sort of statement that will make political consultants cringe because they know the media will have a field day with it, using it to claim Trump hates poor people or whatever. But it's also a statement so obviously true, there's no way it could possibly be controversial unless people are determined to manuacture outrage whenever and wherever they can. Would you appoint a Quaker to be Secretary of Defense? Would you appoint a polluter to head the EPA? Would you appoint some who'd lived his whole life on a farm as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Of course you wouldn't, because these people have proven through their experiences that they're the wrong people for these jobs. Whether you like to hear it or not, a poor person doesn't know anything about making good economic decisions. If he did, he wouldn't be poor.

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Democrats give lip service to the idea that we should attract "the best and the brightest" to government service

Now that doesn't mean you don't want to hear from poor people or understand their needs and concerns. That's important and I hope Cohn will do so. But there's a reason he, not they, are going to be the ones with the ear of the president on matters of economic policy. The poor people's problem is that they don't know how to make any money. Cohn does know how. He's done it all his life. Hopefully with the help of his advice, Trump can formulate policies that help these poor people do better and improve their situations. But having them develop the policies would only make the entire country as poor as they are. For anyone to pretend this doesn't make obvious sense is the height of absurdity. One final point: Democrats give lip service to the idea that we should attract "the best and the brightest" to government service. Fine. But the best and the brightest also tend to be the most successful, and thus, quite rich. For some reason Democrats only respect your best-and-brightestness as long as you're not prospering from it in any way. Unless, of course, you draw from your prosperity to give lots of campaign money to them. That, and only that, is perfectly fine.

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