Powell handles Trump with a lesson from Richard Linklater

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• Harris isn’t running

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• The current defense secretary, on the other hand …

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Make me smarter …

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People just do nothing

Richard Linklater would probably smirk at the idea of his 1991 cult classic “Slacker” having a message.

The shambolic story of a pre-tech-boom Austin doesn’t truck with anything so conventional as a narrative, bouncing off scenesters, oddballs, latte sippers, bulls**t artists and old men in a series of vignettes before chucking its ever-drifting camera off a cliff. The film’s kindhearted thieves and dime-store philosophers set the tone for the decade’s overeducated and underambitious indie cinema, while not seeming to be about too much of anything.

The film puts in a good effort to defy easy explanation, preferring a good hang over a good story. After more than 30 years of rewatches, however, viewers can be forgiven for noticing some themes. Throughout the slices of slow-paced life, it’s hard not to notice a city-wide tendency to let kooks ramble. A taxi driver lets Linklater himself digress about a theory of parallel universes. Conversations about the subliminal messages in Scooby-Doo are egged on.

UFO conspiracy theorists, JFK assassination obsessives, misogynist creeps and angry bartenders are all given space for their spiels by disinterested audiences. There seems to be some unspoken agreement to let the overeager and underresearched wear themselves out.

We can’t say that Jerome Powell has ever seen the first glimpse of Linklater’s laid-back style, but he’s certainly acting like it in the way he’s handling Donald Trump

Trump’s tariff tinkering has worried investors and slowed spending. Desperate to prove that his knee-jerk agenda is the right way to run a country, the president has downright begged the Fed chair to lower interest rates and goose borrowing. Powell, a Trump appointee, knows by now that the best way to beat Trump is to wait. He’ll be weaving his way onto something else eventually.

It’s a strategy you might have seen if you’ve ever been to a brewery on a sunny weekend day. Toddlers run free at the pseudo-bar. Their relaxed parents sip saisons, content in the knowledge that the kids will wear themselves out.

Powell and Linklater prove it works just as well on adults. When a pretentious writer-type in an Austin cafe commands his friends to take dictation, no one moves a muscle. They know he’s going to speechify whether they’re getting it down or not. Powell has taken it upon himself to hold steady as Trump upends the American economy, not rewarding the temper tantrums of the White House with a sudden flow of easy cash. He’s got less important things to do.

What do you think will give first: Trump’s manic need for a win or Powell’s desire to do nothing? Is inaction the right move? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

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