Whenever I hear criticisms of Donald Trump -- or anybody else, for that matter -- valuing loyalty over competence I can only shake my head and say, well, duh!
Of COURSE loyalty is more important than competence. To anyone who doubts it consider. Suppose someone is disloyal and out to get you. Would you rather they were supremely competent or a total idiot? The answer is so obvious as to make the question rhetorical. When someone is disloyal, greater competence means greater danger.
So the real issue is not whether loyalty is more important than competence (it is), but whether the fear of disloyalty is rampant. In other words, to say that someone values loyalty over competence really means that they are beset by fears of disloyalty.
These fears are usually justified. In other words, when the fear of disloyalty is rampant, it usually means that disloyalty really IS rampant.
There are a number of things that can make disloyalty widespread. One is being surrounded by real enemies, offering numerous opportunities for betrayal. That is the situation, for instance, in a collection of city-states, or mafia gangs. It could be a sleazy, underhanded leader asking people to do sleazy, underhanded things that undermine their morals, including their sense of loyalty. That seems a fair description of Trump. And it is also true, as some wise person remarked, that by regarding everyone around you as an enemy and treating everyone as an enemy you will, in fact, end up with a lot of enemies. Note also that when disloyalty is rampant, it becomes self-perpetuating. If everyone else is trying to stab each other in the back, only a fool and a sucker would refrain.*
Only a society in which loyalty is simply assumed can promotions be based on competence. We have had that up until now. Trump is undermining it.
So how does one guard against disloyalty?
It may seem terribly naive and utopian, but one important way to fight disloyalty is through moral authority. That is, so far as I can tell, the real message in A Team of Rivals. Instead of looking for loyalists, Lincoln chose the top talent in the Republican Party for is cabinet and won their loyalty. It took no particular insight for Lincoln to recognize that his cabinet consisted of the top talent in the Republican Party. His real genius was in persuading them to take orders from Mr. Nobody from Hicktown, Illinois. Our whole system functions because our government has moral authority that people respect. That is why Trump and MAGA's attacks on its moral authority are so dangerous.
Of course, this is not to suggest that moral authority alone can can prevent treachery. Another way to prevent disloyalty is to make it difficult. Treachery is easier in a small city-state surrounded by hostile neighbors than in a giant country with ocean to the east and west and friendly neighbors to the north and south.** A favorite fantasy of mine is to imagine myself teaching civics in high school or political science in college and assigning my class to write a paper on what they could do to commit treason.*** The point would be that committing treason in our society today would be extremely difficult.**** It is easy to be loyal when there are almost no opportunities to be disloyal.
Another way is to lower the stakes for disloyalty. This is the approach taken in most commercial capitalist ventures. In a commercial/capitalist context, disloyalty is seen as a minor offense, if an offense at all. Loyalty is valued to an extent, but too much loyalty is regarded as corrupt -- "crony capitalism." In other words, it is not seen as dishonorably for an employee to leave a job when a better offer presents itself, or for an employer to lay off an employee it cannot afford to pay, or a customer to switch to a supplier who offers a better deal. In another context, this would be seen a disloyal, but disloyalty of this type is tolerated because the stakes are not high -- it costs some money, that is all, and money is fungible and can be replaced.
What is valued is integrity -- honest dealings with strangers and associates alike. This would mean not embezzling from an employer or selling trade secrets, but these things are condemned not so much as a betrayal, but as dishonest -- no worse, really than ripping off a stranger or deceit in arm's length transactions.
Donald Trump famously commented that he valued loyalty more than integrity, but that is contrary to the ethos of a commercial/capitalist enterprise, which sees integrity as as foundational and loyalty is a mere extra -- nice to have, but not all that important. For Trump to prize loyalty over integrity in business dealings is another way of saying he values honor among thieves. But honor among thieves is not to be trusted. People with no integrity can hardly be counted on to be loyal. Another reason Trump is beset by fear of disloyalty.
Of course, in the end moral authority, limited opportunity, and low stakes and only make disloyalty infrequent. They cannot eliminate it altogether. That is why we still have security clearances for people doing top secret work that really does offer opportunities for disloyalty with high stakes.
*That is why I do not believe people who think that Machiavelli's The Prince should be understood as satire, or as a warning to the common people. It is a realistic assessment of how to survive when treachery is rampant.
**Trump can't do anything about the oceans, but he is working hard on alienating our friendly neighbors.
***Of course I would never actually do that. It would be way to easy to misconstrue.
****I live in New Mexico. It has Los Alamos Labs and Sandia Labs, both of which offer access to classified information. So the first step would be to get a job there and somehow get access to classified information. The next step is to visit the nearest Russian consulate, which is located in Houston, Texas -- 884 miles from Albuquerque and 904 miles from Los Alamos. Presumably the Russians have spies around both Los Alamos and Sandia Labs, so you would not have to go to Houston every time you wanted to give them information. But the point stands.
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