Chaos and disloyalty
Raise your hand if you needed to read the confessions of an anonymous senior administration official to realize President Donald Trump’s management style is “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
Trump’s 19 months in office have aged many Americans at least twice that length of time. The president has a base of supporters who embrace or ignore the chaos and pugnacity. For others, including those of us who seek to judge Trump’s policy work separately from his erratic personality, these are trying times. With him in charge, the circus never shuts down.
Twice this past week, installments of America’s strangest reality show—otherwise known as the Trump presidency—provided glimpses of White House staffers in panic mode. First there were news reports about Bob Woodward’s new behind-the-scenes book, Fear, in which we learned that adviser Gary Cohn lifted a letter off Trump’s desk so that the president wouldn’t act on his threat to scuttle a trade deal with South Korea. Then came The New York Times’ decision to publish the anonymous op-ed describing crafty efforts by Trump officials to keep the country from running off the rails.
Woodward’s book, not yet on sale, uses unnamed sources to describe life in the White House. Readers will be able to draw their own conclusions based on the reporting of a respected journalist. The op-ed is a different matter. The unidentified official gave the piece to the Times and then sneaked back to work, hoping not to be uncovered later by a livid president.
Our problem with the op-ed is the lack of accountability. The “senior official in the Trump administration” raises a serious question about whether Trump is fit to be president, then slips past any follow-up responsibility. Instead of leading public debate over possible invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office, the writer tells Americans to trust administration officials: They’ve got this, whoever they are. They’ll thwart his “misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
But how much credibility should Americans give to someone who takes his or her shots from a secret hideaway?