CONFIDENCE MAN

I hate the way NASA does their countdown announcement for exotic hardware blasting off into space. They can't just count down to zero and say "lift-off." They have to follow those words with a commercial for the flight: "Three-two-one, liftoff of the blah blah blah mission to explore the blah blah blah in conjunction with blah blah blah."

And so on.

Not a clean announcement of a spacecraft headed outside the atmosphere.

C'mon, NASA, just say "liftoff" and let us enjoy the spectacle in peace. Stop blabbing all over the thing!

But it's a tradition, okay? It's the way they do it. You can't mess with the pattern.

There's a similar tradition with the announcement of beauty pageant winners. They can't just name the winner. They have to pare it down to the final two and let 'em stare at each other until the name of the "first runner-up" is announced.

By process of elimination, we are now supposed to know the woman not mentioned is the actual winner.

In some contests I've seen, they strip out various third, second, and first runners-up, leaving just two contestants standing. One is the winner. The other is the ultimate loser, a woman who's not even a variety of runner-up. She's nothing. She's dog food.

That's gotta hurt.

You may be aware of the glitch at the recent Miss Universe pageant. The show's host, Steve Harvey, got it down to the last pair of ladies, then pronounced one of them the winner. He failed to see the fine print on the inside of the envelope. The one he named, Miss Colombia, was meant to be the first runner-up, not the winner.

All kinds of confusion and embarrassment followed, and so forth. The announced "winner" had to stoop a bit so the crown could be snatched off her head and schlepped over to the "true" winner, Miss Philippines.

The newly de-crowned loser said afterward that everything happens for a reason, so she was okay with the outcome.

Nonsense.

Stuff happening "for a reason" is a staple of the supernatural world, the one thought to be governed by unseen forces (or cosmic personalities).

God, it is supposed, runs the show in his best mysterious fashion, which is why you can't complain.

(I mean, seriously, don't complain. That guy is wired-up wrong and likely to go off on you in the worst way.)

For his part, Donald Trump, who used to own this beauty pageant, said this sort of mistake could never happen if he were in charge.

A ridiculous statement, of course.

The only way he could have prevented Harvey's mistake would be to have a sniper in the rafters, green-lighted to shoot at the first errant quiver of the host's lips. Is he about to say a word starting with a "c" and not the "p" he is supposed to pronounce?

Blam! Off with his head!

Assuming the sniper deal was not Trump's first choice for preventing errors, you'd have to ask what he really had in mind.

And I think I know his answer, based on previous "solutions" he's offered to reporters when they ask how he plans to accomplish his goals: "Good management."

This is not actually a statement about something real. It merely expresses Mr. Trump's confidence in his abilities.

He knows (or thinks he knows) he can do stuff and he wants you to rest assured all is in good hands.

You name it, can he do it? You bet he can! In spades!

That's his message.

His other message: Nobody else can do anything because they're all a bunch of pathetic lying losers.

Good management is harder to define than bad management. It's easier to compile a list of actions not to take if you want success.

Good management is mostly one thing: paying attention.

Or hiring good folks and telling them to pay attention.

Success in one area tends to give you the confidence that you know what you're doing. But success in the real world is never guaranteed.

Stuff happens. Bad stuff. Sometimes spectacularly bad stuff.

Especially when you're dealing with human beings, who are often unpredictable. Or the weather, which is frequently less predictable than folks would like to think, despite all that technology.

Still, confidence can be good. Sometimes it's all you've got. It may keep you from standing paralyzed when things need to be done.

Confidence can also be disastrous. Fools rush in, and so forth. Reality is a tricky bitch.

Hiring a guy who "knows" he has what it takes to get the job done is probably better than kidnapping some guy at random and putting a gun to his head, just to see what he can accomplish for you.

But super-confidence, of the sort Donald Trump waves about so casually, can make a man as dangerous as the fellow with no earthly idea how to get done what folks what him to do.

Super-confidence tends to blind a person to his imperfections.

It can even make the court jester think he's the king.