Why we just might miss Rex Tillerson

Rex Tillerson will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of state ever. It won’t all be his fault, of course. Secretaries of state can only be as strong as their Presidents let them be, and Donald Trump constantly undercut Tillerson from the beginning.

That said, Tillerson did plenty of damage to himself. He never bothered to try to understand the culture of the State Department. He came into it with the imperious approach of a CEO — and not just any CEO at that. He came from ExxonMobil, a company that spent more on international issues than all but a handful of countries, and was a force unto himself in his industry.

The “I’m from business and I understand this stuff better than you working stiffs from government” approach didn’t work any better for him than it has for Trump or for much of his cabinet.

Tillerson gutted the State Department. He did not appoint officials to key posts. He oversaw the greatest mass exodus of talent from the department since, to paraphrase President John F. Kennedy, the days in the Washington administration when the first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, would leave his office to go home.

The loss of career diplomats and the lack of attention to bringing in new ones will cost U.S. diplomacy for many years, as it will take that long to recruit and train quality people once that again becomes a priority.

Tillerson also was not effective as a representative of the President. This was due in part to Trump’s lack of understanding of or interest in anything complicated or that required things like, oh, I don’t know, reading. It also was due to the fact that Trump gave a big chunk of the responsibilities that might traditionally have gone to a secretary of state to his slender nothing of a son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (Remember when he was called Secretary of Everything because he was handling Middle East peace, China, Mexico and everything else except steaming Trump’s pants?)

But we also need to be brutally honest, here. Tillerson did not do himself any favors when he called Trump a “f-----g moron” and then refused to deny he did. This would get under the skin of any President, and from that moment on, Tillerson was a dead man walking.

That said, despite all these defects — and Tillerson’s failure to resign after incidents like Charlottesville, which should have brought the repudiation of the President from everyone on his team — Tillerson did do some good.

He favored talks over conflict with North Korea. He favored negotiations over pulling out of the Iran deal. He opposed Trump’s wildly destructive tariffs on steel and aluminum. And, as recently as Monday, he dared to criticize Russia for its terrorist attack on our closest ally, the U.K.

It has not escaped comment that 14 hours after Tillerson criticized a Russian regime the White House almost never calls out, he was summarily fired. By tweet. Without explanation.

This is just the latest sign of how vigorously Trump seeks to protect Vladimir Putin for reasons that are known only to him but that are clearly not in the U.S. national interest. But it reminds us that in the end, for all his defects, Tillerson ended up getting fired for the times he spoke the truth, be it about the President’s intellect or his policies.

That, of course, will be missed. It will be missed by people like Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was allied with Tillerson on many issues.

It will be missed in the mix of an administration that has a clear deficit of adults who can counterbalance Trump — a deficit that has grown in the last week not just with Tillerson’s departure but with that of Gary Cohn as his chief economic adviser.

And it will be missed, whether he knows it or not, by Trump, who will suffer from being surrounded by sycophants and “true believers.”

Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo is one such true believer. He is smart. But he developed a reputation among CIA career employees as a guy who was not above coloring intelligence findings to suit his political views or those of the President. That’s dangerous in a CIA director, and it’s a serious warning sign for a cabinet that is likely to become more homogeneous and less inclined to challenge Trump.

With other potential changes on the horizon and reputed replacements for people like Cohn and national security adviser H.R. McMaster — such as economist Lawrence Kudlow or GOP bomb-thrower John Bolton, respectively — it does not look like Trump is trading up. And for America and for the world, that is an ominous sign. It looks like the worst is yet to come.