Being Scott Bessent

In the 1999 Spike Jonze film “Being John Malkovich,” a failing puppeteer discovers a secret portal behind a filing cabinet that allows him, quite literally, to enter the mind of actor John Malkovich for fifteen minutes. After that brief, disorienting trip, the traveler is unceremoniously ejected—spit out next to the New Jersey Turnpike, as if to remind him: you don’t belong here.

One wonders if Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent experiences something similar, though with fewer filing cabinets and more blinking red lights on secure phones.

Bessent, a respected hedge fund veteran with an Ivy League pedigree and a cool demeanor, entered public service not through the usual door of policy wonks or campaign loyalists, but rather by answering the call of a president who governs more like an algorithm on shuffle. His daily routine seems to involve trying to thread the needle between market stability and executive volatility—a job not unlike being inside a tornado and asked to iron the drapes.

Trade negotiations are announced on Tuesday, reversed on Wednesday, denied on Thursday, and sometimes doubled down on by Friday afternoon. China is both a valued partner and a nefarious villain. The Fed chair is both a genius and an “enemy of the people.” Then Bessent, like a good soldier, is sent forth to explain all of it on television.

In the film, Craig Schwartz (the puppeteer played by John Cusack) finds his way into John Malkovich’s head and begins to pull the strings, quite literally. But the human mind, especially one famous for its creative unpredictability, resists being controlled. In the White House, Bessent doesn’t need a portal to be inside the president’s head—he’s there in person. Briefly. For about fifteen minutes. And then, like in the movie, he’s jettisoned back out, metaphorically landing not on the New Jersey Turnpike, but somewhere along the Washington Beltway, left to make sense of the surreal.

This isn’t to say Bessent is a puppet. Far from it. He’s a grown man with decades of financial experience and a calm that often belies the chaos swirling around him. But he’s trapped in a narrative not of his own making—tasked with giving coherence to improvisation, and gravity to whim.

His reward? Occasionally being ignored, sometimes being contradicted, and now and then being asked to explain why the president has just threatened tariffs against a country whose name was mispronounced.

What Being John Malkovich taught us—aside from never trusting a portal behind office furniture—is that identity is fragile, and power, once shared, rarely stays in the hands you expect. What Bessent’s experience may one day teach us is how institutions survive even when logic takes a sabbatical.

For now, Bessent holds the briefcase, holds his tongue, and holds the line—as long as that line lasts.

Fifteen minutes at a time.