The Code of Competence

In Atlas Shrugged, Francisco D’Anconia says, “[T]here’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value…The code of competence is the only system of morality that’s on a gold standard.”

Leaving aside for the moment the moral and ideological failings of our current president (which I have written about extensively elsewhere), it is astonishing how simply incompetent Trump and his entire administration are. From the smallest of projects to the biggest, Trump has made a hash of things to an unprecedented extent.

Of course, sometimes this is a blessing: it is mostly due to his incompetence that we have not become a full-blown authoritarian state.

Why do I bring this up? Because there are still people who maintain that Ayn Rand would have admired Donald Trump. They need to be reminded of the many reasons this is an absurd position, not the least of which is how poorly he executes on what he sets out to accomplish. He is a joke, and America under his rule has become a laughing stock. Rand took America very seriously — as we all should — and because of that I am mystified by anyone who thinks this administration would have her support, much less her admiration.

Admittedly, while Trump has always been more sizzle than steak, more hat than cowboy, he wasn’t quite as spectacularly incompetent during his first term. Might Ayn Rand have voted for him in the 2024 election, as did her “intellectual heir” Leonard Peikoff*? While he never makes this claim, Peikoff compares his support for Trump to Rand’s support for Nixon in the 1972 election. With all due respect, I don’t think this is an apt comparison. It might be if Rand had urged support for Nixon after the Watergate cover-up was exposed. She did not. And Trump’s character is far worse than Nixon’s, and his crimes and incompetence far more egregious.

For starters, I find it hard to believe that Rand would blank out the fact that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, as so many Republicans (and Objectivists) have chosen to do. Rand was always ruthlessly honest and thought about issues in their full context. The context of Trump running again in 2024 was that he tried to steal an election. That isn’t an opinion—we all saw him attempt to do it in real time. His supporters try to excuse his actions by saying he believed the election was stolen, and was thus merely trying to right a wrong. The problem with this justification is that his beliefs are an utter fantasy — he has never been able to produce creditable evidence to support his claims (Trump and his supporters filed 62 lawsuits contesting the election. Nearly all them were dismissed or dropped for lack of evidence or lack of standing, including 30 lawsuits that were dismissed by the judge after a hearing on the merits). People who commit crimes based on their fantasies are still guilty of the crime. At best, they might avoid conviction by claiming “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Such a person would not be fit for public office, though — and I’m confident Rand would have recognized this, even if millions of voters did not.

Leaving aside the issue of election-stealing (other than the shooting, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?), keep in mind that Rand refused to even vote for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election due to his alignment with the Religious Right. Trump has empowered evangelical Christians to a much greater extent that Reagan ever did. It is due to his court appointments that millions of women have lost their right to bodily autonomy. Rand would have been horrified by this. She wrote: “Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved.” More recently, Trump continues to work to erode the separation of church and state, repeatedly criticizing the concept and urging Americans to “forget about that” and instead build “bridges” between the two. I don’t see Rand brushing this off as easily as some Objectivists seem to.

Lastly, I think Rand would have found Trump’s emotionalism and anti-intellectualism deeply, viscerally offensive. This is the woman who wrote: “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.” Given this view, I think she would have abhorred each and every one of Trump’s top cabinet members, from anti-science nitwit RFK Jr., to bullying drunkard and Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth. Each of them could be a character in one of her novels — but most certainly a villain rather than hero. Trump himself is like an unholy mix of Wesley Mouch, Orren Boyle, and Mr. Thompson. I would say he resembles Peter Keating in his lack of a self — but this would be unfair to Keating. At least Keating could get people to attend his parties; his architectural designs, while unoriginal, were structurally sound. Trump can’t get more than a handful of people to attend his “Great American State Fair,” and he botched the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (those would be the small failed projects I mentioned above). As to the big failures, many books will be written about Trump’s blunders in handling what could have been a triumphant war with Iran, and of course how he sought to turn ICE into a gestapo-like militia, immune from the rule of law or common decency. Both will be stains on our history for decades to come.

Anyone who thinks Ayn Rand would have admired this incompetent buffoon of a president needs to re-read her books. She worshipped competence. She admired men of character and ability. I don’t think an honest person can claim that Trump is either of these things.

*Note: I continue to have tremendous respect for Dr. Peikoff’s many accomplishments, and do not mean criticism of this particular article to be any kind of blanket condemnation of him. I have heard (from mutual friends) that since writing the piece, Dr. Peikoff has been critical of some of Trump’s actions (especially his handling of Iran). However, I must emphasize I have no first-hand knowledge of his current views on the President.