You are sitting at your desk in the world’s most famous workplace. Day after day, you are feeling like your supremely skilled experts somehow just managed to paint you into yet another corner in your unique Oval Office.
Calamities that were not just unthinkable but quite preventable have been happening to you since the first days of your presidency. First came a shameful disaster that should have been easily avoided — America’s calamitous withdrawal from the Afghanistan War. It had been anticipated ever since it was announced during the Trump years, yet it was never properly planned. Most recently, we’ve seen shattering failures of two banks that simply weren’t supposed to be allowed to fail: California’s Silicon Valley Bank and New York’s Signature Bank. Yet, your superstar U.S. Cabinet officials were caught off guard. Or even worse.
So no wonder you are sitting in your grand Oval Office and sympathizing with another old guy from your era — baseball’s Casey Stengel, whose workplace was just a dugout. After years of winning many World Series managing the Yankees, Stengel was managing New York’s brand-new Mets, who kept inventing new ways to lose. And so, New York’s legendary manager was famously said to have told New York’s legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
