The Confidence Men

They were never qualified. But they were expected to succeed. And that expectation—unearned, unexamined, and unshakable—is what built the whole system.

There’s a certain kind of man who never had to prove he belonged. The room was built for him. The job was waiting for him. And the world—whether through silence or applause—told him he was ready long before he was ever tested.

Pete Hegseth is facing his second SignalGate scandal. Another batch of leaked messages. Another performance of damage control. And somehow—still—he’s treated like a man fit to lead. But Pete isn’t the story. He’s the outcome.

This is about the pattern. The template. The assembly line of confidence men—built not by genius, but by expectation. Rewarded not for what they’ve done, but for who they remind the gatekeepers of.

Clean-cut. Well-connected. Assertive. White. These men fail upward while calling it leadership. They speak in consultant gibberish—”a whole-of-government approach,” “widening the aperture,” “re-centering the brand”—as if jargon can mask the absence of a moral compass. They’ve mastered the optics of authority without ever shouldering the burden of responsibility.

And their bosses? They know. They know the man they picked isn’t qualified. But they still prop him up, still offer full-throated public support—because they think proximity to power can be mistaken for competence. That if they just pull the strings hard enough, the puppet might start dancing on his own.

Meanwhile, people like me—Black men—don’t get to be “a work in progress.” We don’t get the benefit of the doubt, or the soft language of growth. We have to arrive ready. Over-prepared. Twice as sharp, three times as composed, just to be seen as credible. And even then, we are called difficult. Disruptive. Replaceable.

I’ve lived this. I’ve watched power elevate the mediocre while demanding excellence from the rest of us. I’ve watched men weaponize paranoia—leaking to the press while accusing others of betrayal—until the entire institution is suffocated by suspicion and silence. It’s not leadership. It’s fear in a tailored suit—sometimes with a flag pen or pocket square or both—or a Midtown finance bro vest with the company logo.

And still, the press is the altar they worship at. They leak to it. They obsess over it. And in the end, it’s the very thing that unravels them.

One glossy profile too eager to please. One Fox & Friends interview too arrogant to prep for. And suddenly, the illusion shatters. Because their bosses? They can stomach failure. What they can’t stomach is failure in public. Not when it reflects back on them. Not when the man they built becomes a mirror—too close, too clear. A corporate version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Where the moral and professional failings they refused to see in themselves show up in headlines they can’t ignore.

And when it all starts to fall apart, the pattern repeats: A long walk in the park. A soft landing. A press release filled with euphemism and grace.

They always get the walk. They always get to fail politely. The rest of us? We get tossed.

Pete’s day is coming. That walk. That exit. That quiet rebranding as a misunderstood visionary.

But the real scandal isn’t the leak. It’s that he was ever trusted with the job in the first place. Because the tragedy isn’t that they fail. It’s that they were set up to succeed in the first place. You can’t coach a man into competence when the only thing he’s ever truly mastered…is privilege.