The Emperor Has No Clothes - and We've All Known for a While

So . . . The Op-Ed.

The latest act in the Trump Administration's 3-ring circus took place a few days ago, when the New York Times published an op-ed by an alleged "senior official in the Trump administration" which basically confirmed what everyone already knows: Trump's presidency is a absolute fiasco and Trump himself is thoroughly unfit to govern. The op-ed lays out a laundry list of flaws, portraying the president as inconsistent, prone to fits of pique, impulsive, lacking any intellectual curiosity . . . things that were abundantly clear to anyone who was paying attention during the presidential campaign. So, none of Trump's character defects are really a shocking revelation.

Seriously, if they weren't obvious to you, you are a very poor judge of character.

What I found interesting, and maybe a tiny amount irksome, was that the op-ed writer claims to be one of many administration officials actively seeking to thwart Trump's most disastrous policy ideas. The op-ed doesn't mention any specific incidents, but Bob Woodward's book corroborates much of it while also providing specific details. Including (assuming the story is true) removing official papers from the president's desk to prevent him from signing them into policy.

For sure, every president butts heads with his cabinet members, advisors, or other senior officials. It would be naive to think otherwise. In a similar vein, there's often a disconnect between what the president wants and the career bureaucrats charged with making it happen.  Maybe the intent gets lost in communication. (Remember that "telephone" game?) Maybe an agency's office in a rural area doesn't have the resources to adequately implement the directive the way the president envisioned.  Maybe the president's idea is unworkable or runs into conflict with existing policies.  The US government is a big, sprawling bureaucracy, and problems are bound to arise in the process of translating the president's general directives into specific legal or regulatory policy.

There's a difference between problems that typically arise in a presidential principal-agent relationship, and what's going on in the Trump administration.  As much as I'd probably cheer if I knew just what ill-conceived policy ideas Trump's senior officials have derailed, I'm just a bit displeased about how they went about doing it.

And before you think I'm heading there - no.  NO. This is NOT a coup. Here's a good explanation on why it isn't.  Basically, it comes down to the fact that these officials still agree with a large portion of Trump's agenda, and want to keep him in power to see that agenda through. So let's nip that idea in the bud.

But just because it's not a coup doesn't make it okay, though.  Neither does the fact that they're containing one of the worst presidents this country's ever had.  These senior officials, even if they're doing what's right for the country, are still usurping part of the president's authority.  Authority they were never meant to have.  They may have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but they never ran for election.  Nobody voted them into office.  Nobody knows what positions they have on certain issues - which might tell us what criteria they're using to grade proposed policies.  So what metrics are they using to decide what policies are too awful to be made official? This administration is okay with breaking up families and keeping kids in cages, so it's clearly okay with a lot.  If that policy was approved, how bad must the ones we're not seeing be?

And if Trump is so bad at being president, why don't these officials use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office? Because he's still politically useful.  Here's the best take I've read about the anonymous op-ed so far.  It makes quite a bit of sense, and I happen to agree with almost all of it.

I've said several times that Trump is the predictable outcome of roughly twenty-five years of the GOP's poisoning of American political discourse: science-deniers like Rick Scott and Jim Inhofe, bumbling idiots like Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Michele Bachmann, and opportunistic partisan obstructionists like Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan.  They all created this monster and now it's rampaging across the countryside.  Only they can't put it down, because now they need it.  Trump demolished fifteen other GOP primary candidates, some of them experienced and capable politicians.  Which means that he is what the GOP base wanted.  Trump redefined what's considered acceptable political conduct, he inspired others like Jim Jordan and Roy Moore to adopt his methods, and now the GOP needs to fall in line behind him if they want to keep winning elections.

Trump is unfit for office, we all knew that.  And in the process of displaying his absolute unfitness, he's removed the last shred of doubt that the GOP is a morally bankrupt political party, equally unfit to govern, and also that the entire right-wing media establishment is a farcical propaganda-peddling machine.  And since the party's leaders are unwilling or unable to develop some political courage and begin the process of  removing Trump from office, the country will continue to watch a reckless, incompetent president crash from one fiasco to the next.

The 3-ring circus continues.