Writing Through My Policy Depression
It's been a bad week on top of a bad month on top of a bad year. What to do?
Longtime readers of Drezner’s World are no doubt aware that I am a pretty optimistic person most of the time. Sure, I study international relations and am now occupying a middle-management position at a university. Both of those things could drag my spirits down — but they don’t! In all honesty my life is pretty great. I am happily married with a loving family, I live in a wonderful locale, I’m aging reasonably well, my dog is the best dog in the whole world, and I am officially distinguished now. I have few traumas to exorcize or perseverate on. What is there not to like?!
I bring this up not to brag but to explain that I am mostly unfamiliar with the sensation of being depressed. Plenty of my friends and family have experienced bouts of depression. I sympathize and empathize as best I can. But I have almost never become so despondent that I would just lay around and do nothing for days and weeks on end.1
This past week, however, something felt different. Again, I don’t think its personal depression. I think it’s a professional depression. Because as someone who writes about and studies global political economy and American foreign policy, it’s been a shitty week on top of a shitty month on top of a shitty year.
Which stories in particular have gotten me down? FFS, where do I start?! In reverse chronological order, there’s the bad jobs and inflation news — but even more important was the Stalinist reaction to this news from president Donald Trump:
President Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market on Friday, saying without evidence that the data were “rigged” and that he was firing the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official responsible for pulling together the numbers each month.
In a long post on social media, Mr. Trump said he had directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024….
The president fired Dr. McEntarfer after the bureau released monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring in July and large downward revisions to job growth in the previous two months. Economists widely interpreted the report as evidence that Mr. Trump’s policies were beginning to take a toll on the economy, though the president insisted in a subsequent post that the country was “doing GREAT!”….
The firing prompted swift criticism from economists, former government officials and others, who said the removal would further erode trust in government statistics and make it more difficult for policymakers, investors and businesses, who rely on having dependable data about the economy to make decisions. In addition to the monthly jobs numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for producing data on inflation, wages and other aspects of the economy….
Mr. Trump and his top aides have made a habit of attacking government agencies, researchers and watchdogs when they have produced findings that the president does not like. That has led to concerns that Mr. Trump could seek to interfere with the operations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other statistical agencies, particularly if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse.
Until now, however, most experts on the statistical system said they remained confident in the data produced by the agencies and had seen no evidence of political interference in their operations. Current and former agency staff members consistently echoed that message — in part, they said, because they trusted Dr. McEntarfer and her counterparts at the other major statistical agencies to protect their independence.
So yeah, that sucks. It is also a variation on a recurring theme, in which Trump politicizes the parts of the executive branch that are supposed to be avowedly apolitical. For example, Trump is trying very, very hard to staff the upper ranks of the U.S. military with partisan loyalists, as the New York Times’ Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman wrote earlier this week:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has begun requiring that nominees for four-star-general positions meet with President Trump before their nominations are finalized, in a departure from past practice, said three current and former U.S. officials.
The move, though within Mr. Trump’s remit as commander in chief, has raised worries about the possible politicization of the military’s top ranks by a president who has regularly flouted norms intended to insulate the military from partisan disputes….
Recent presidents have elected to meet with some officers being considered for sensitive positions, such as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the four-stars leading the military services or combatant commanders overseeing U.S. troops in war zones, former officials said. But the officials said it could be impractical and unnecessary for the president to meet with nominees for all four-star openings. There are currently about three dozen four-star generals and admirals in the U.S. military.
“While these officers are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they are not political appointees,” said the retired Col. Heidi Urben, a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Mr. Trump’s decision to interview most or all of them creates the impression that “they’re political appointees selected on the basis of their personal loyalty and partisan alignment.”
None of this instills confidence in the competency and professionalism of the executive branch. The president has repeatedly sent the message that grievance, anger, and pettiness are his primary policy drivers. Anyone aspiring to stay employed or move up the ranks is now strongly incentivized to tell Trump exactly what he wants to hear — regardless of whether it is true or not.
When outlets like Axios are writing sentences like, “it's just one glaring example from a week that bore many authoritarian hallmarks — purging dissenters, rewriting history, criminalizing opposition and demanding total institutional loyalty,” then you know things are bad.
These hits came on top of other depressing stories this week: Israel’s ongoing starvation campaign against the residents of Gaza (aided and abetted by Trump), the counterproductive tariff announcements (after weeks of haphazard negotiations), and, of course, the administration’s extortion exercise of Ivy League universities.
It’s all bad, but worse than that, it will be difficult to reverse. To be sure, I hold out some hope that the administration’s tariffs will eventually be thrown out by the courts. But the universities have already struck their bargains. The foreign policy community has already made their peace. The BLS head was already fired. The myriad other examples of Trump politicizing the bureaucracy are proceeding apace.
Even if the GOP loses in the midterms and then in 2028 presidential election, can the damage be repaired? I have my doubts. The hard lesson of this century has been that institutions and norms can take decades to build up and months to be destroyed.
So yeah, I’m stuck in a bit of a professional depression. I don’t want to read much about this right now, and I certainly don’t want to comment on it at length. There are only so many variations of “this is a horrible idea and we will be feeling the effects of it for some time” one can write.
This does not mean that the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World will not be opining. Rather, for the rest of this month, the staff might be focusing more on personal reflections, popular culture, and technology than the more standard fare of “what is the United States government doing now?!”
At some point I will roust myself from my professional funk. There must be a wonk equivalent of Zoloft — maybe it’s drinking at APSA or something. But it will happen.
Right now, however, everything is bad.
Admittedly, there was that month after my college girlfriend and I broke up that left me very much down in the dumps. The only thing I remember about that period was that I binged thirtysomething, which is definitely not the sign of a well-ordered mind.
Imagine if you had no voice, no substack, no way to help or shine a spotlight, and nobody you know feels any better about all this death of the rule of law than you do.
That's your readers. And we're here because we need your focus. It makes a difference.
I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree. My dogs are the best dogs.