DOWNSIZING MR. BANNON
President Donald Trump’s decision to remove Stephen Bannon, his chief political adviser, from his post as a principal on the National Security Council has led to no end of speculation in Washington that this is the beginning of the end of Bannon’s outsize influence and is payback for his role in the administration’s early missteps.
The move was a welcome course correction, removing a contentious and extremist political voice from a vitally important policymaking body and making it more likely that people with actual expertise will help an inexperienced president make tough choices on China, North Korea and Syria.
No presidential adviser in recent memory has so brazenly tried to consolidate power as Bannon, who moved quickly to establish himself not just as Trump’s Svengali, but as a kind of de facto president. Bannon framed the executive order that named him to the council’s principals committee, which includes the vice president, secretaries of state and defense and other top officials. It is the primary policymaking body that decides national security questions that do not rise to the level of the president, and it sets the debate over matters that do.
Previous presidents have decided such decisions should be separate from politics; Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s chief political adviser, was barred from council meetings. Bannon’s appointment was thus widely condemned, not only because he was a political adviser but also because he was a particularly combative one. Trump, angry he was not warned about the implications of the appointment, briefly considered rescinding it immediately, then did not, fearing even more furor.
The new order has to be seen as a victory for Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the respected new national security adviser who reportedly insisted on purging Bannon.
Trump’s order also corrected another error in the original directive, restoring the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence to the committee. The committee membership has been expanded, and will now include the energy secretary, the CIA director and the U.N. ambassador.
Bannon, aided by Breitbart News, the alt-right platform he brought to prominence, tried to spin his removal as a natural evolution. He says he was put on the committee to watch over Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, and with Flynn out of the picture, his presence was no longer required.
Yet if the White House leak machine is to be believed, his influence was already in decline. He had lost favor with Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who have been embarrassed by big defeats on health care and immigration that Bannon had a hand in.
Bannon still has his security clearance, still has Trump’s ear and still apparently is running a policy shop that is viewed as a competitor to the council. Among those working for Bannon is Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism adviser and founder of an extreme right-wing party in Hungary in 2007; The Forward has published articles saying Gorka publicly supported a violent, racist and anti-Semitic paramilitary militia that was later banned as a threat to minorities by multiple court rulings. If such charges are true, Gorka obviously should not be working for the White House.
McMaster reportedly has not been allowed to fire Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a 30-year-old Flynn-era holdover who does not have the gravitas to be senior director for intelligence programs. And the administration’s messages on Syria, Russia, China and North Korea have been confusing. Bannon’s departure gives McMaster an opening to bring more professional discipline to policymaking. Trump should help him do so.