Ego Is The Enemy
How notoriety has replaced accomplishments in American public affairs.
I’ve spent over 35 years working in and around political and public affairs communications, but I did not intend to focus on those topics when I started writing “6 to 64.” Intentions aside, the state of the world requires me to say a few things right now.
There are many reasons we decided to move from the Washington, D.C. metro area (the sixth largest MSA in the country) to a town outside of Knoxville, Tennessee (the 64th largest MSA, hence “6 to 64”). For me, a primary factor was a philosophical realization about who I wanted to be compared to the nature of people in my profession.
The TL;DR version is this: While ambition is a constant in politics and not altogether bad, I’ve watched a startling transformation of public service and public policy over my 35-year career. What was once the realm of well-meaning people with healthy egos is now completely overwhelmed by selfish and self-centered people for whom ego is the only motivating factor in any public policy decision or action.
Praise = Success
About ten years ago — 25 years into my career — my life felt out of control. My job was a major contributing factor (so was parenting a teenage daughter, but that’s another article). I found myself surrounded by highly respected people doing vital work, driven by a clear mission with very achievable goals and objectives. Yet my efforts to achieve those goals were constantly thwarted and sometimes even derided by my colleagues, who seemed to misunderstand the meaning of “objectives.”
I struggled for several years without understanding the world I lived in or why I felt so adrift.
However, gradually, I started to realize what was happening at work. Our mission, goals, and objectives were meaningful and righteous—but they were window dressing. They looked great on paper, but few of my colleagues used them to guide their work.
Essentially, they weren’t working to achieve our objectives successfully; they were working to create the perception that they were succeeding so others would praise their work.
Let me give a brief example. One objective was to maximize the number of people who read a report about some policy recommendation. My team and I developed a particular strategy to achieve this objective. It included tactics like outreach to the media, having certain well-known figures comment on the report publicly, etc. It was standard stuff that we knew would work.
Another team developed a different strategy based entirely on A/B testing Facebook posts, which was my superiors' chosen path.
Ultimately, they celebrated their great success, as measured by the number of “Likes” they generated on Facebook. When I pointed out that fewer than one percent of those “Likes” had actually clicked the link in the post and, therefore, had not read the report (which was, if you recall, the objective), I was told to stop being “negative.”
“How do I get other people to notice and praise me?”
In other words, my colleagues created the perception that they had achieved the objective by choosing a metric they knew they could maximize and telling everyone that it was a valid measurement of success. My team and I were alone in recognizing that, in reality, they had failed even to approach the objective.
What truly fascinated me, though, was their interpretation of the outcome. They were not trying to be clever or fool anyone; they believed they had succeeded. They forcefully denied any suggestion that they weren’t achieving the stated objective.
Over time, as I watched this happen repeatedly, I came to understand that, unconsciously, they were cognitively replacing every goal or objective with a different one: “How do I get people to notice and praise me for this work?”
Furthermore, I realized that this cognitive replacement behavior is ingrained in many people I encounter in politics and public affairs. Their egos convince them that notoriety and praise equal success, so the right approach to achieving anything is the one that will most likely result in notoriety and praise.
Once they achieve that notoriety and praise, the ego gets worse.
Success = Exceptionalism
When ego-driven people receive praise and notoriety, they see themselves as exceptional. After all, few people attain notoriety, so they must be special, right?
Their egos, however, lead them to conclude that their exceptionalism means anything they do is, by definition, the right thing to do. They can’t make serious mistakes or get anything wrong because they are exceptional.
If things don’t go their way, it’s not due to any action they took or didn’t take; it’s just bad luck. Any opposition to their actions or lack of appropriate attention to their exceptionalism is just from “haters” who must be diminished or, better yet, banished from the world of politics.
Egos that have reached the “Exceptionalism” stage in politics and public affairs are often quite visible. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is an excellent example.
MTG found that bombastic, inaccurate, and even racist articles and Facebook posts got her attention and notoriety. Her ego interpreted that as success, so she became even more bombastic and got herself elected to Congress. Despite having no actual legislative accomplishments, she believes herself to be exceptional and derides any opposition as unworthy.
Of course, more and more candidates for office are following this model, particularly within the GOP. The qualifications for office are not legislative acumen or a passion for public service. Only notoriety is necessary. (See Mehmet Oz, Hershel Walker, J.D. Vance, and Kari Lake.)
Exceptionalism = Entitlement
The last phase of this terrible advance in modern public affairs is the rise of entitlement. When people’s egos embrace their assumed exceptionalism, they begin to believe they are entitled to say and do almost anything.
My favorite example of this is not political at all. Linus Pauling was a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning chemist who also won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear non-proliferation — the only individual to have won more than one unshared Nobel.
Pauling had been diagnosed with a renal disease and, in the 1960s, became interested in vitamin therapy. In the 1970s, he began publishing books claiming that massive doses of Vitamin C could cure everything from the common cold to cancer. He had no expertise in any field related to the topic, but, hey, TWO NOBELS!
Of course, when scientists who were experts studied them, all of his Vitamin C claims proved to be false. However, he went to his grave claiming he was right because he believed himself to be exceptional and entitled to be believed.
Entitlement in Public Affairs: The Cases
This same ego-driven sense of entitlement, based on exceptionalism, interpreted from success defined by notoriety, has saturated public affairs.
I need to take a moment here to differentiate ego-driven entitlement from ambition.
Politicians have always been ambitious, and generally, ambition is a positive trait when not taken to extremes. One can be ambitious without being entitled, just as one can achieve notoriety without believing oneself exceptional. The difference is whether one is driven by ego.
For example, no biographer would deny that Lyndon Baines Johnson was ambitious or that he had an enormous ego. But he wasn’t controlled or driven by his ego. He tempered it with his duty and responsibility to do what was best for his country. That’s how he was able to end his 1968 re-election campaign. He didn’t like it, but he did it.
In the first quarter of the 21st Century, we’ve seen politicians and other public affairs leaders of both parties wholly succumb to their egos and embrace entitlement. Here are the leading examples:
The Republican Party — We’re entitled to lie to Americans as much as we want to ensure we hold power, even when we don’t win elections.
Mitch McConnell — I’m entitled to interpret when the Constitution applies.
Barack Obama — I’m entitled to anoint the Democratic nominee for President.
Hillary Clinton — I’m entitled to be President.
The News Media — We’re entitled to normalize anti-democratic authoritarian misinformation and lies (to prove we are not biased).
Ruth Bader Ginsberg — I’m entitled to stay in this job until I die.
Clarence Thomas — I’m entitled to ignore ethical standards, as is my wife.
Samuel Alito — I’m entitled to ignore ethical standards, as is my wife.
Never-Trump Republicans — We’re entitled to expect that Democrats (who we vilified for decades) will save our Party from Trumpism and return it to our control.
All six conservatives on the Supreme Court — We’re entitled to rule in whatever way benefits our preferred political party, regardless of what the Constitution says, stare decisis, or the “originalism” and opposition to judicial activism that we claimed was our foundational legal philosophy for decades.
Joe Biden — I’m entitled to run for a second term (even though most of my party thinks I shouldn’t, and everyone knows I’m losing).
Donald Trump — I’m entitled to do whatever I want, whenever I want, how I want, to whomever I want because I understand how Ego works, and the rest of you don’t.
Ego is the Enemy
We have real problems in this country. One of our major political parties has gone insane, but no one is really doing much about it. Both parties and, indeed, most of the public affairs class (including the media) are too ego-driven to engage the problem responsibly.
I don’t know how we walk this back. Term limits? Ending the primary system? Political satire that’s actually funny instead of just sad?
If you have ideas or any other thoughts, let me know.