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Dictators don’t like getting bad news. There’s evidence that as late as March 2003, Saddam Hussein genuinely believed that his regime would withstand the overwhelming strength of the Anglo-American coalition that invaded Iraq. Saddam’s information minister, nicknamed “Baghdad Bob,” denied that the enemy was inside of the Iraqi capital well after US troops had breached the city. When he was finally forced to concede that point, the propagandist confidently asserted, Emperor Palpatine-style, that everything was going according to plan [ [link removed] ].
The rest of the world must have found some macabre comedy in those ridiculous pronouncements. Inside the Iraqi presidential compound, however, that kind of talk was the gospel truth. Anyone with misgivings kept their second-guessing private. They might have recalled how an unfortunate health minister ended his life in multiple pieces [ [link removed] ] after offering Saddam candid feedback during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War.
Last week, President Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the agency turned around a jobs report that didn’t match the White House’s rosy self-image.
Someone more subtle might have tried to pass off the timing of McEntarfer’s dismissal as a coincidence. But Trump, being Trump, took to Truth Social to insist that the latest employment statistics were “RIGGED;” a matter of “FAKE political numbers.” McEntarfer, a non-partisan bureaucrat and hardly a household name, was suddenly the latest enemy of the state.
The president’s inner circle quickly closed ranks. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, doing his best Baghdad Bob impression, said the whole affair was simply a matter of getting “highly-qualified people” [ [link removed] ] into the Bureau of Labor Statistics to look at the data with “a fresh set of eyes.”
McEntarfer is not going to meet the graphic end that those who speak up under real dictatorships often do. However, the threat of being fired may be incentive enough for people to start massaging the contents of documents on their way to the Oval Office. Today, it’s a disappointing jobs report. Tomorrow, it’ll be something more severe. What kinds of information will the “highly-qualified people” surrounding the president produce when America faces a real crisis—a pandemic, war, a hurricane, or a crippling terrorist attack?
One of democracy’s key advantages over dictatorship is that the professionals are able to do their jobs without fear of retaliation. Elected officials, chosen by the people, have the final say on policy, not appointed bureaucrats. But the statisticians and intelligence analysts and military officers can’t be summarily dismissed for sharing forecasts that politicians don’t like.
The system isn’t perfect, but, on balance, it means that leaders in the Free World have access to better information than their authoritarian counterparts.
Democrats on Capitol Hill jumped to call the president out for firing McEntarfer. Even a handful of Republican senators [ [link removed] ] seemed to recognize, belatedly, what’s at stake here. Yet words are cheap. Members of both parties need to reinforce protections for civil servants. They need to fight McEntarfer’s removal, which should not be treated as a fait accompli. America has historically boasted a democratic competitive advantage over its authoritarian adversaries. Only vigilance and constant improvement can keep that edge sharp.
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