| 1 | Is there a holdover policy/tradition/norm/ more/ingrained habit from the previous administration that cries out for a good breaking? | |
| NO | 2 | Of course there is. There always is. LOOK HARDER. GO TO 1. |
| YES | 3 | Is there somebody in your administration who is likely to oppose you breaking said policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit? |
| YES | 4 | Replace them with somebody who believes in disruption as much as you do. Well, almost as much – you being the Disrupter-in-Chief. Somebody who will enjoy the breaking as much as you will. Well, almost as much, because, you know. |
| 5 | Does the person you choose have the qualifications to do the job? | |
| YES | GO TO 3 | |
| NO | 6 | Hire them anyway! It’s easier to break things when you don’t know how they work! GO TO 3 |
| NO | 7 | Break the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit. |
| 8 | Is the break in the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit sufficiently under the radar and/or are the president’s shenanigans sufficient to keep the public from complaining about it? | |
| YES | GO TO 1 | |
| NO | 9 | Have the President insult anybody who complains and/or do something outrageous to distract the public’s attention from the breaking. |
| 10 | Does the distraction work? | |
| NO | GO TO 7 | |
| YES | 11 | Are the adverse consequences of breaking the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit starting to turn members of your base off (fickle bastards, always thinking of themselves!)? |
| NO | GO TO 1 | |
| YES | 12 | Claim that you always had/are currently working on/will soon start working on a way of fixing the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit that you broke. Tell your base that if they just give you a little time (two weeks sounds good), the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit will be even better than it was before the breaking. |
| 13 | Is this true? | |
| NO | 14 | No, it isn’t. It isn’t remotely true! I call fibbing! That is such a fib! How do you sleep at night? Seriously, if I fibbed like that, I would die from lack of sleep! And I power wake! |
| YES | 15 | Abuse of power comes as no surprise. |
| 16 | Has enough of your base swallowed their reservations and fallen in line with the breaking of the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit? | |
| YES | Perfect! Time to break another policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit! GO TO 1 | |
| NO | Stubborn bastards! Maybe if you break another policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit, it will distract them from the policy/tradition/norm/more/ingrained habit you just broke. GO TO 1 |
Notes
The problem with being a strongman leader is that, to be successful, you have to be strong. All the time. Strongmen can’t wait for committees to produce bills that have to pass through both houses of Congress that will only make incremental changes in governance – waiting is weakness. But how can you be strong when the previous leader left you with a system that, while not without its problems, was fundamentally sound?
You have to break things yourself.
President Ronald McDruhitmumpf is very good at breaking things. You could say it’s his life’s passion. Other than grifting. In his first term, adults were in the room, which inhibited his impulse to break things. In his second term, the adults have been sent to a corner – let the breaking commence!
You may have noticed that The Ronald McDruhitmumpf You Broke It, Everybody Else Pays For It Algorithm has no end point: either what is broken is ultimately fixed or the President gets bored, but either way, he moves on to breaking something else. Okay, it’s unlikely that things get fixed: since the adults are staring at the wallpaper in the corner, replaced by loyalists, there isn’t usually anybody left who can fix things (although even low odds events happen if the volume of events is high enough, but who wants to live through so much disruption for one thing to actually get fixed?).
But this is also by design, since it can create a “crisis cascade,” where, as soon as the public starts complaining about one broken part of the system (say: inflation), another broken part will get their attention (say: war in Iran). There are, of course, limits to a crisis cascade: when enough parts of the system are broken, crisis fatigue can set in, making people hostile towards the strongman. But if you can just keep the crisis cascade going for four years, that becomes somebody else’s problem.
As always, The Ronald McDruhitmumpf You Broke It, Everybody Else Pays For It Algorithm is descriptive, not prescriptive: it describes the way things are, rather than the way they should be. If you don’t like this reality, you can always try another one!