This shouldn't be Trump announcing the ban. Either FAA or Secretary of Transportation should be announcing the grounding of flights. Its just odd to me that Trump would be involved...
But either way, this is symbolic and shows the stance of the government to the world and internally. The highest office in the US is grounding the planes like the rest of the world is, the administrative nuances are irrelevant. Boeing and the airlines would be the ones to challenge it, way to go for PR.
Violating that tradition is rather stupid for a President. Not only are FAA decisions now tainted, he is putting himself square at the center of blame for anything negative happening from now on. It’s even worse considering there aren’t really any symmetrical opportunities to shine with a job well done in aviation safety comparable to a crash.
It is an analogy, which is why I used the word analogous, and it still fits.
The power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States, who also acts as head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. There isn't any framework to have a rebuttal to that, this is as succinct as it gets.
SOME agencies are independent of this structure. They are called independent agencies.
Other agencies are not.
The President's primary role in this capacity is to steer the executive branch, and this is done using rather mundane executive orders which are usually merely plans, again ANALOGOUS to a companies quarterly or annual goals. A CEO lays out the mission and the organization follows that.
The job title is a 3-part job. Head of executive branch, head of state, and commander-in-chief of armed forces. The celebrity status and reliance on The President's every move and stance on everything is merely happenstance, but a byproduct of the constitutional government becoming involved in every aspect of American society, having subsequently created all these "not-companies" with millions of employees, and perpetual armed conflicts around the world.
So finally, head of the executive branch, for agencies not independent of this structure, the President is ANALOGOUS to the Chairman/CEO and has ultimate say in steering them. There is no tradition that was violated.
Anyway, on the topic at hand, the FAA followed the order and indications from the President and issued their own.
Unfortunately Trump didn't start this trend but I really hope whoever is next stops it.
His ability to directly influence, and damage, the executive branch's operation in service to the people to what he wants is thus limited.
Do you know what the Presidency is? It's the head of the executive branch. By definition, Chief Executive of the United States. The law specifically are for the President being CEO -- that's exactly what being president is. The one who signs bills, runs the organizations who enforce the laws, and runs the military that defends the country. The president is 100% in charge of the Executive Branch and all of its agencies -- that's exactly what the job is! He could fire every head of every non-independent executive agency tomorrow and it would be 100% constitutional.
That is...unclear, at best. The only account of the decision making I've seen in any news source that comes from anyone involved (e.g., excluding CNBCs unsourced claim of an "executive order") is Boeing's claim that they recommended the action "in an abundance of caution" to the FAA which acted on it. (EDIT: Actually, the FAA has just tweeted that they made the decision, based on evolving evidence from the investigations, so that's another narrative.)
Of course, the White House can assume the privilege of announcing any decision from anywhere in the executive branch, and the President announcing it as an "emergency order" that "we" are issuing is factually correct where "we" refers to the Executive Branch.
Well, it does seem to spend a lot of time on Twitter. Perhaps he saw something convincing there.
I disagree. Bureaucracy is a good thing. This smacks of a President that looks a) desperate for attention and b) incapable of delegating.
The question is how the public should have been informed by the event. Dan Elwell, the acting director of the FAA, is both a military and commercial pilot. If he made the announcement, it would have carried far more weight than Trump (who likely doesn't know much about airplanes).
Also important: he's a lobbiest for the airline industry.
It made the news when he was confirmed because of his ties to the industry. He is the Ajit Pai or Betsy DeVos of the FAA.
Why not the Tom Wheeler of the FAA?
That seems to be a closer fit to the kind of industry ties he has had then either Pai or DeVos. Pai's industry ties was as a lawyer for Verizon, whereas Wheeler's were as head of first the cable trade association and later the wireless trade association, and having been involved in several telecom companies. That seems a much closer match to Elwell, who was VP of a major aerospace trade association and a pilot and an airline executive.
People criticized Trump for putting a non-scientist at the head of the Department of Energy, however, where is the criticism of Obama for putting a non-pilot as the head of the FAA? When Trump does something wrong, sure, criticize him, but Elwell is an experienced, relevant choice to head the FAA -- especially compared to Huerta. Reducing Elwell to "Lobbyist" is silly, if one actually looks at his background.
I don't actually think Trump is doing anything wrong in trying to take responsibility for the action, and suspect the decision was reached through appropriate channels rather than by him reading something by a pilot on Twitter, but having a president known for more being capricious than his understanding of aviation safety as the figurehead behind the decision does make it look less like a reasoned decision to the average person, especially if they have strong anti-Trump priors.
Trump owned an airline with a fleet of 17 Boeings. He also used 2 large Boeings as private jets.
Very likely he knows a thing or 2 about airplanes.
I predicted two days ago that this would turn into a shit storm of hysteria, justified or not. The President exerting his authority is similar in that sometimes these events turn too emotional and fearful. He made the right call for that sake.
Surprisingly, I am not a botanist.
Even if Trump were to give a phone call along the lines of 'Ground the Plane or else I'll write an executive order' , the optics of the situation would be so much better if Chao (Secretary of Transportation) or Dan Elwell (FAA Acting Administrator) were to give the announcement instead.
If the President is requiring it then the proper mechanism to do that is an order.
You're suggesting a side-channel phone call and a threat so that he's still deciding but it's recorded as someone else's decision for PR purposes, and you think that's better? That's a terrible idea.
I disagree with GP, but this is basically how firings are handled at high levels.
It's very rare for a POTUS or a corporate CEO to actually fire a direct report. Instead, they say "you have X days to resign before I fire you" via a side channel, and most of the time the report opts for the resignation.
(funny thing is, at the first company I worked for, the CEO did this to the VP of Engineering... and the VP assumed he was bluffing, waited out the whole 30-day period he was given without resigning, and then got walked out of the building one morning in front of everyone who was there that early... and the guy who was in charge of walking him out was one of the people who was promoted to replace him)
Personally involving himself unnecessarily is Trump's MO. "Only I can fix it." was one of the themes of his 2016 RNC speech.
more to the point, who told the FAA bods not to pull the plane? Was this the President too?
Because of how this has been handled by the Trump I think Boeing now have a 'Samsung Note 7' on their hands, i.e. a product that isn't going to be re-released as it is poorly engineered and can't be fixed by just changing a supplier or two. It was a hack with another hack to keep the hack okay. There will be a who knew what and when scandal. This won't be like the Dreamliner teething issues due to two lost planes. People can forgive teething issues but a scandal is a different beast.
> In August 1989, a Trump Shuttle flight arriving in Boston incurred a nose gear failure upon landing due to maintenance errors by Eastern personnel prior to the acquisition. Trump personally flew on the next Trump Shuttle flight to Boston in order to manage the media reaction to the incident.[3]
I actually don't believe this is true - I can look up citations in a bit, but the FAA is an independent body whose directors are appointed by the president.
The Federal Aviation Agency was an independent agency, but the Federal Aviation Administration, which it became, is a subordinate agency within the Department of Transportation. It has an Administrator, but it does not have directors, commissioners, or some other multimember voting governing body.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/boeing-shares-fall-after-rep...
Yes, but it'd not be unusual for the agency's director to check in with the president on a course of action or vice versa, verbally or via memorandum, without the president formally invoking his presidential authority via executive order.
To put the whole thing in perspective, the number of EOs issued annually by recent presidents Bush and Obama was very modest, averaging 36.4 and 34.6 respectively.
The words he used was "emergency order" and "we", not "executive order" and "I". CNBC is reporting it (not quoting any official source which says that, and citing only the President's "emergency order" public statement) as an "executive order", but other news sources are not, and Boeing is saying that they recommended the grounding to the FAA.
My initial impression is that this is an FAA action based on Boeing's recommendation that the White House wanted to take the press attention for.
That would make me feel better if this were true. It seems to match my expectations for who is in charge of various decisions, as well as the politics that Trump likes to play. So it makes sense at least.
> Early Tuesday, Dennis A. Muilenburg, the chief executive of Boeing, spoke to President Trump on the phone and made the case that the 737 Max planes should not be grounded in the United States, according to two people briefed on the conversation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/boeing-737-groun...
Maybe Boeing changed it's mind in between yesterday and today?Or that reporting was inaccurate?
Or, that's exactly what happened, but then today either Trump or Boeing or both of them realized this wasn't gonna fly (no pun intended), and that they had to be grounded, they talked to each other again, Trump decided he wanted to make an announcement about it because he likes being on TV about whatever he's thinking about at the moment. (I'm not sure an "emergency order", which Trump said it was, is even a thing?)
I mean, really, who the fuck knows. This administration doesn't tend to make a lot of sense, and it's kind of kremlinology trying to guess why they do what they do.
Well, the link to the order has that in its title (but is also a dead link right now):
[page with link] https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=93206
[target of link] https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf%2...
[EDIT: Oh, they f-ed up the URL in the link with a trailing space, and didn't verify it before posting: https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf ; It is indeed an "Emergency Order of Prohibition", and an FAA emergency order is an actual distinct legal thing under 49 USC Sec. 46105(c) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46105 ]
FAA has an acting administrator: Dan Elwell. He was appointed by Trump to be Deputy Administrator.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-hasnt-trump-nomi...
First of all, there is a backlog of higher priority nominees. It wouldn't be good to distract congress from those.
Second of all, the constant harassment of this administration must be having a huge impact. A person has to be slightly crazy to accept a nomination. They and their family will be facing physical danger, legal danger, and more. Lots of competent people are thus unavailable as choices. The constant harassment has had a real negative effect on the quality of our government.
Put yourself in their shoes. You have a normal family and could earn millions of dollars per years in a nice comfortable corporate executive position. How insane do you have to be in order to take something like $150,000 while living in the expensive DC area and being unable to simply go out to eat in public? What normal parent would subject their kids to the abuse?
Scaring away qualified people does not improve the government. You don't do that unless seeing Trump do badly is so important to you that you are willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of the country itself.
Actual qualified people like Mattis and Tillerson faced little trouble. Even Gorsuch, who was the embodiment of a stolen seat, did just fine.
What's scaring away qualified people is the proud ignorance and naked corruption of the administration.
And it's the same when we're considering nominations in general. What happened to Kavanaugh could happen to any nominee, no matter the branch.
He initially tried to nominate his own pilot for the job (the same who screwed so much that FAA had Trump's plane grounded).