Insisting on Perfection

Below is a 45-minute video describing the phenomenon I like to refer to as Trump One -- Trump's Boeing 757 private jet. It is luxurious, flamboyant, and glorious. But more than that it is about a man and his employees who share his dream of doing a job and doing it well. I invite you to spend the time to watch.

It is easy to assail Mr Trump for this extravagance and easy to call him a tyrant for being so demanding on his pilot and immediate his staff, and the other people whom he employees or buys goods and services. But, it's his money, his business, and he has worked very hard to get it. He can spend it as he wishes and he can insist on his employees doing what he asks. He can insist on those providing him goods and services that they be to his exacting specifications.

Otherwise, they the employees can go elsewhere or the vendors can seek other, less particular customers.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this video is how the pilot willingly accommodates Donald Trump's impossible demands and his seemingly whimsical schedule changes or flight requests and does so with a true spirit of professionalism. For example, I fly as aircrew with the Air Force Auxiliary and we are called upon to do 90% of the USAF's search missions. (We work cheap and are more effective because that is our training and proclivity.) We also have other state and federal agencies we fly missions for. With each mission, we must prepare our small, single-engine aircraft by ensuring its airworthiness, filing a flight plan, and the usual stuff. But it is not trivial. The scale-up on Trump's 757 is enormous with respect to logistics, FAA requirements, etc. To see this experienced pilot manage all of these things so flawlessly is truly awe-inspiring. The coordination with Trump's staff is astounding!

And, that he smiles through all of this is incredible and certainly praiseworthy.

But if you step back and take a moment to understand his motivation, there's a lot more than money and prestige at work here. Like all pilots, he loves to fly airplanes. As he admits in the video, he is a neat freak. These combine, in my mind, to indicate that he would would love to have a magnificently immaculate aircraft all of his own and would be relentless in caring for same.

But, as Trump's pilot, he gets to pilot this state of the art aircraft and see to it that it is always in tip-top shape. (It is instructive that he was busy with a toothbrush and cleanser helping out with the last-minute touch-up moments before take-off.) All this PLUS he gets a handsome salary to boot.

But this is NOT the real takeaway here. It's that this jet is not just some figment of Trump's egomania. It is an extension of his business. He does multi-million dollar deals in the jet and, if the jet was not impressive and well-maintained, what impression might that impart on those Trump is dealing with?

What I took from this is that this insistence on perfection and attention to detail is sure something we could use in the White House -- compared to that Lawn Jockey POTUS pretender or the bubble-assed Bitch of Benghazi who both ooze slime and have no idea how business is to be conducted.

It would be a refreshing change to get a government that works again as it should.