Lawyers backing Trump have a cure for impostor syndrome

"There is nothing that alleviates impostor syndrome quicker than seeing actual impostors get exposed"

President Trump at a rally in Georgia (Getty Images)

President Donald Trump is finishing his presidency much as he started it, with an omnishambles so vast even the writers of "Veep" acknowledge that they could not keep up. 

The New York Times's Peter Baker aptly summarised the president's witless incompetence over the weekend: "Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results."

Over the next few weeks, myriad pundits will try to find this administration's genuine accomplishments. But as the president's flailing efforts to overturn the election results proceed, it should be noted that this White House has one underappreciated perverse accomplishment: a cure for impostor syndrome.

Most academics, myself included, suffer from varying degrees of "impostor syndrome" - the anxiety that one has achieved success merely because of luck or happenstance and will soon be exposed as a fraud. My nightmare is not showing up to school naked; it's showing up at an academic conference in which everyone in the audience knows more about my paper topic than I do (and that I'm naked).

While I have suffered mild bouts of impostor syndrome in my academic day job, it was more acute the year I worked in the federal government. Even as I learned how to navigate the bureaucratic byways of policymaking, I always had this gnawing fear that I would mess something up and get called out as a fraud by my more experienced peers.

President-elect Joe Biden's hires are all experienced in government, but they are taking new rungs of responsibility that might induce feelings of impostor syndrome. A few months from now, new appointees at lower rungs might feel it even more.

To a degree, impostor syndrome can be a productive anxiety, propelling one to be more prepared than would otherwise be the case. Too much of it is hampering, however. And, thankfully, on their way out the door, the Trump team's manifest incompetence should make things easier. There is nothing that alleviates impostor syndrome quicker than seeing actual impostors get exposed.

And let's be clear, this administration is riddled with impostors. Mr Trump's administration has been beclowning the executive branch since 2017. The high burn rate of his personnel has made things worse. By the start of 2020, this administration was scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. Since the November election, things have actually worsened.

It is Mr Trump's post-election legal team, however, that is full of impostors. In the past week, Trump attorney Jenna Ellis was the subject of not one but two profile pieces that looked into her professional background and found it seriously wanting.

The Wall Street Journal's Mark Maremont and Corinne Ramey explained how Ms Ellis inflated her résumé by claiming to be a State Department attorney though she never worked there. The New York Times's Jeremy Peters and Alan Feuer were even more brutal in their story: "She holds herself out as an expert on the Constitution based on her self-published book and her teaching of prelaw classes to undergraduates. She has never appeared in federal district or circuit court, where most constitutional matters are considered, according to national databases of federal cases."

Sidney Powell can count herself lucky that Politico's Zach Montellaro and Kyle Cheney looked only at her recent legal work as opposed to her entire career. Still, what they wrote was pretty damning:

Sidney Powell released the Kraken. And it turns out the mythological sea beast can't spell, is terrible at geography and keeps mislabeling plaintiffs in court.

A congressional candidate whom Ms Powell claimed to represent in one lawsuit said he had nothing to do with Ms Powell or her quixotic effort, which she dubbed "the Kraken," arguing that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. An expert witness cited in another suit named a nonexistent county in Michigan. A Wisconsin lawsuit sought data on alleged irregularities at a voting center in Detroit, which is in Michigan. And a filing in federal district court signed by Ms Powell misspelled "district" twice in the first few lines.

The sloppy mistakes aren't just a sideshow, despite Ms Powell's quip on Twitter when a Politico reporter took note of the mangled words: "No extra charge for typos." Judges also have been flummoxed by the procedural moves and errors committed by Ms Powell, who was booted from Trump's legal team in November but still is crusading to overturn the election results.

Little wonder that even Mr Trump thought Ms Powell was embarrassing and ordered her booted from his legal team. Nor is it surprising that the remaining "elite strike force," which is how Ms Ellis described Trump's legal team, is now 1 and 46 in court cases, including an embarrassing zero for six on Friday. Politico's Cheney and Josh Gerstein reported, "Several of the most devastating opinions in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees." The only thing this elite strike force has succeeded in has been catching the novel coronavirus.

For four years, Mr Trump's populist defenders have railed against elites and extolled governing either from gut instinct or in opposition to elite consensus. As the Biden-Harris transition team has announced competent appointee after competent appointee, these same voices are railing against meritocrats or identity politics or, you know what, I honestly do not care anymore. After four years of endorsing this clown show of an administration, framing impostors as disrupters, the populist criticism falls on deaf ears. I will take governance by those suffering from impostor syndrome over actual impostors every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

The Washington Post