In baseball, if things aren’t going well with your team and you need to send a message, what do you do? You always fire the manager. Now, it might not be his fault. It might be other people’s fault. In fact, it might be that you—the team owner—are to blame. But you can’t fire yourself. So you ditch the manager.
The same is true in politics. The last month has been an unmitigated disaster for Donald Trump. And this is almost exclusively because of…Donald Trump. But it should come as no surprise that he fired his manager, Corey Lewandowski, today.
We shouldn’t be surprised when a guy who likes to say “You’re fired!” fires the help. But if Trump thinks this shakeup will solve his fundamental problems, he has another thing coming.
His success in the GOP primary was premised on his being a force of nature and a cult of personality. The downside is that Trump’s model of success—which required authenticity and improvisation—necessarily precluded having a campaign manager who ran a tight ship and built a top-notch organizational infrastructure.
Just as Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad month cannot be blamed on Lewandowski, it’s likewise hard to imagine his departure will have any negative impact on the candidate’s fortunes going forward. It’s a wash.
We should view this shakeup for what it is: A tacit admission that Trump’s campaign is in grave danger.