Bye, good riddance
No one should shed any salty tears over the ouster of presidential chief strategist Steve Bannon. The guy represented this administration’s most solid link to the fever swamps of the alt-right. But it would also be overly optimistic to believe that Bannon’s departure will by itself save President Trump from his own worst instincts.
Bannon, no doubt having realized his days were numbered after Gen. John Kelly was installed as the president’s chief of staff, apparently decided to go out in a blaze of glory this week with an interview with liberal journalist Robert Kuttner. (Bannon’s protestations that he thought the interview was “off the record” ring hollow for a guy with his media savvy.)
And in that interview Bannon dissed a laundry list of colleagues — and his president’s own policies. On those who oppose an aggressive trade policy against China he said, “That’s a fight I fight every day here. We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn [National Economic Council director] and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”
He touted his own powers over personnel at other departments.
“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in,” he said. “I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting director of the East Asian division] out at State.”
But then he committed the gravest sin of all — mocking the president’s own bluster about being “locked and loaded” over North Korea.
“There’s no military solution, forget it... they got us,” he said.
It was a helluva swan song for a week Bannon must have known would end badly.
It was also Bannon who argued against having Trump make his Monday statement on the Charlottesville violence — the sensible one soon contradicted by the president himself on Tuesday.
Which brings us to the real point: Yes, the White House will be a better place without Steve Bannon in it (and could he take Stephen Miller with him when he leaves?), but his departure will not change the basic nature of the man who occupies the Oval Office. It simply means the West Wing grown-ups are ascendant.