Five (short) thoughts on the politics of an airplane crash

This is not now and never will be a newsletter of hot takes. Regular readers know it’s usually quite the opposite. However, last night’s midair collision at DCA over the Potomac crystalized several things I’ve been thinking about this week.

First of all: I am, like many with D.C. ties, specifically heartbroken about this crash. It feels uniquely personal. I am a longtime loyal American Airlines flyer and specifically fly in and out of DCA 30 to 40 times a year—probably close to a thousand times in my lifetime now—and know its operations so intimately. I’ve also written about the specific Army unit affected in my book RAVEN ROCK and watched those same gold-topped helicopters a thousand other times fly low over the Potomac. I feel terrible for everyone affected.

Beyond the tragedy, though, I think it’s a valuable window into some of the challenges we’ve seen the country wrestle with in the first days and weeks of the Trump II era. Specifically:

This is why you don’t comply in advance. Waking up today, there is no FAA administrator—and, actually, not even an acting FAA administrator. The unanimously Senate-confirmed head of the FAA, Mike Whitaker, resigned on inauguration day, just a year into his five-term, under pressure and after being berated by Elon Musk for the FAA’s slow approvals of SpaceX missions—missions, by the way, that even as recently as last week have repeatedly blown up and caused hazards to aviation. No acting administrator has been appointed yet. I don’t believe Mike Whitaker staying in the role would have prevented last night’s crash, but would I feel better with an experienced leader in charge of the investigation that’s now unfolding? Absolutely. Every career civil servant out there contemplating leaving federal service should think about this crash and the nation’s genuine need for to stay and be competent and experience. If you want a tiny ray of hope this week, read this Reddit thread about how Elon Musks’s insane buyout-that’s-not-a-buyout has inspired federal workers to stick out the tough times ahead. Which leads me to…

This is why you chose people who are ready on day one. Sean Duffy started just hours ago as Secretary of Transportation. He is among the best, normal, and qualified-in-the-general-sense of any of Trump’s Cabinet appointees. Hardly anyone would be ready for a catastrophe on their first day. And yet this is precisely why it’s so important that senior government officials are, as the saying goes, “ready on day one.” Cabinet posts and leading government agencies are not places for on-the-job training. The sheer ignorance of basic responsibilities, authorities, and knowledge that we’re seeing across the confirmation hearings should be deeply troubling. RFK Jr. in his confirmation hearing yesterday appeared confused about Medicare and Medicaid. These are not the people we need leading incredibly important functions of government. Which leads me to…

Government works until it doesn’t. Here’s the thing that so many people missed about the Biden administration: Competence is quiet and boring. The Biden years were mostly soooo boring for reporters to cover because government just worked. Smart, thoughtful people made smart, thoughtful decisions and government toiled away in the background of Americans’ lives. It should be more remarkable than it was that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden made it through their presidencies without any meaningful Cabinet leadership scandals.

That’s the supposed beauty of representative government—other people you don’t have to know are supposed to take care of it. The inspector general of the USDA isn’t supposed to be in the headlines. You shouldn’t have to care about who is serving as the FAA administrator to fly safely in an airplane. And we shouldn’t worry about who is leading the nation’s health agencies in a time of public health challenges.

It’s obviously too early to know what went wrong last night in the DC airspace (thought that hasn’t stopped from Donald Trump insensitively speculating and, as commander-in-chief, blaming the military, see below!), but we do know that our commercial aviation system is already overstressed; air traffic controllers have been warning for sometime that they’re already at a breaking point. Recent days have surely not improved that situation. The chaos of these first days of the Trump administration—from spending freezes to encouraging mass employee resignations to doing everything possible to discourage anyone who isn’t a cis white Christian male from entering government service—hints that we’re going to start seeing government functions break in specific ways, both predictable and unpredictable.

Last fall, I wrote about the increasingly extremely likely scenario that we watch the federal government just slowly degrade over the years ahead. Every day of the Trump administration so far has only underscored that the basic functioning of the federal government is more fragile and delicate than anyone realizes—and also that it touches more of us in more ways than we typically consider. Which leads me to….

Consider the asymmetry of our politics. At the almost exact moment of the crash last night, I was watching Pete Hegseth—the least qualified person ever to lead the Pentagon, a man who failed out of leading the only small organization he’s ever managed—give a shambolic interview to Fox News about how he was rooting out DEI out of the military and how it would be “merit-based” now.

Ever since, I haven’t been able to get out of mind the hypothetical of how Fox News and the GOP would politicize last night’s event had the circumstances been reversed and it was the first week of a Kamala Harris presidency. What hay would they make of an Army helicopter crashing into a commercial airplane—the first US commercial crash in sixteen years!—just days after a Black woman president tried to gut air safety and installed as Secretary of Defense a favored cable news host, the least qualified person ever.

Add in that the FAA is without a leader because the president’s best billionaire friend harassed him into quitting.

Add in that said defense secretary was busy doing cable news appearances from the White House lawn when the crash happened. Yada. Yada. Yada.

We all know what the shoe-on-the-other-foot would look like. We would be staring at years of Benghazi-style show hearings, investigations, and wall-to-wall cable news coverage. This is Hillary Clinton’s email on steroids.

I hope Democrats, who thus far have barely bothered to show up as an opposition party, have even an inkling of the backbone to treating the unfolding catastrophe that is befalling our government as the unfolding catastrophe it clearly is. I hope they start asking questions and pressing for answers—and pressing for future action to secure our airspace and government—at anywhere near the level that the GOP would have their hair on fire had the situation this week been reversed. Which leads me to my final thought….

Lastly, if you want the opposite of hair-on-fire thinking about this crash, go read Jim Fallows. There’s no writer in the country better on aviation and analyzing aviation mishaps. I have happily subscribed to him for years and love his writing.

Thanks for reading!

GMG