Dana Milbank is one of the Washington Post’s most dishonest and untrustworthy partisan hacks, so naturally he rates a “Guest Essay” in the New York Times. This one is called, “How Much Humiliation Can JD Vance Take?”. The thing is filled with the standard issue Axis talking points ( GOP policies to enforce laws against illegal immigrants are “anti-immigrant stances” and are among “other dark elements of the MAGA movement”) but the most notable aspect of this trash is that Milbank found remarkable what is standard management practice in business, government, and in fact any hierarchical organization blessed with competent leadership. He wrote,
“At a closed-door Easter luncheon at the White House, President Trump decided to entertain the crowd by humiliating his understudy. Mr. Trump demanded an update on Iran peace negotiations from Vice President JD Vance. “How’s that moving?” Mr. Trump asked, in a video of the event the White House seemed to have accidentally posted online. “It’s going good, sir,” Mr. Vance replied from the audience. Mr. Trump cut off the rest of his response.“Do you see it happening?” the president asked, about a successful end to the war. “Uh,” the vice president replied. “We’re going to brief it to you.” Then Mr. Trump delivered his punchline. “So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” he said, to laughter. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”
Milbank seems to think he has a smoking gun example of the VP being “humiliated.” The only one humiliated is Milbank: Somebody tell him.
First of all, Trump was joking, and, as usual, obviously so. The Axis has established a pattern of interpreting Trump’s deliberate self-parodies, trolling and exaggeration for effect as sinister. Morons. Even if much of Trump’s clowning is needlessly polarizing and unpresidential in my view, taking it seriously is a core Trump Derangement symptom.
Primarily, however, a superior’s position that if a subordinate fails, he or she is accountable, but if the subordinate succeeds, the boss gets the credit is routine, classic, absolutely correct and well-understood by anyone who has managed, been managed, been in the military, been active in the business world or, to be blunt, has the minimal life experiences minimally qualifying anyone to be trustworthy as an analyst or commentator.
I was informed that Trump’s declaration was the way of the world in my first post-hiring meeting with the future head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most gifted leader and manager I have ever encountered. “here’s what you need to understand,” Tom Donohue said. “If you do a good job, I look good, I get the credit, and I’ll take it. If you don’t do a good job, I look bad, and you might suffer for it.” I went through my own career as a manager and leader frequently conveying the same message to my staffs. Part of the job of a subordinate is to make the boss look good.
And may I add: Duh.
Ethics Alarms 
“If you do a good job, I look good, I get the credit, and I’ll take it. If you don’t do a good job, I look bad, and you might suffer for it.”
What crap. Effective leaders always credit their team for whatever success they have. The implication, properly left unsaid, is that the leader put together a good team. Likewise, effective leaders accept responsibility for failure. If corrections within the team are needed, to the extent possible, they are undertaken away from a public forum.
HJ
I tend to agree with your statement but those leaders are not the norm. Not every leader is an Eisenhower. More often than not the subordinates job is to accomplish the task at hand which, if successful, makes the leader look good. Even those leaders who accept merit awards and give credit to the team in doing so they are the ones in the spotlight. It is not always the leader’s fault for failure when even more senior leaders whose goals require cross functional collaboration but then give each team competing goals.
Indeed. Citing an exemplary outlier does not rebut a fact that another standard is far more common.
The leaders still gets the credit, and also gets credit for having the wisdom to assemble a competent staff. The principle is also crucial, because it reminds subordinates of whose reputation and status is really at stake when they screw up. Pam Bondi and the Puppy-Killer never grasped that. People…like you…hate it when Trump says out loud what most leaders never express.
Some readers here will already be familiar with this: “The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
Thankfully, that statement by one of our greatest leaders did not have to be released to the public.
That sounds suspiciously like what General Eisenhower wrote in the run-up to Operation Overlord…in case things went poorly.
It was, and Ike was deliberately channeling one of his role models and heroes, Robert E. Lee, when Lee took full responsibility for Pickett’s disastrous charge….because it was indeed his call. Note that Lee never deflected blame from JEB Stuart, whose absence in the critical early stages of the battle but Lee’s forces in peril.
Amazing. To take note of trolling, lying (exaggeration??), belittling subordinates and opponents alike, threatening allies, cozying up to white nationalists, and on and on — morons afflicted with TDS. Likewise, the kid in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale was an idiot child afflicted with EDS (Emperor Derangement, not what some of you were mentally substituting) while the adults were not at all into self-delusion. Some of the lashing out at ‘morons, tds’, seems to me to be an attempt to justify a vote made in 2024.
Really silly comment, HJ. Trump making that accurate observation about a subordinate’s role isn’t belittling, and the fact that this jerk doesn’t know that proves that he’s unqualified to pass judgment on the President’s leadership style…as, sadly, are you. “An attempt to justify a vote made in 2024”! Are you kidding? I’m still waiting for anyone sane to justify their vote in 2024 to endorse a non-democratically-nominated empty suit who picked preening idiot as VP while spending four years denying tht the President was demented—and dared to base her candidacy on “saving democracy.” Objectively, this has been a spectacularly successful 16 months for Trump, unless one thinks open borders, discrimination against whites, interfering with elections, wish-craft climate change waste, being Europe’s patsies, attacks on law enforcement, government by partisan judges and presumed guilt by association and government censorship are all boons to civilization. I know it’s frustrating to be proven spectacularly wrong over and over again (I’ve been there, though not recently), but seriously: time to hide your head under a paper bag.
I stand chastened. I see now that decisive victory in Iran has been proclaimed. I’m sure as can be that all U.S. military forces are now being returned to their home bases. Well, unless Hormuz isn’t open and we’re going to completely destroy Iran’s military capability once or twice more. Or unless there’s an agreement. Or something.
I suspect Dana knows the general rules of corporate management but if all you have is a hammer, . . .
jvb
Further, I don’t like a lot of reporting on the administration any more than you do. But, it’s not all TDS.