Political courage in the Age of Trump

Last week we learned that the anonymous senior administration official who authored the infamous September 2018 New York Times op-ed will have a book coming out next month titled “A Warning,” doubling down on the oped’s themes. According to the back-jacket cover, in the book “you will hear a great deal from Donald Trump directly, for there is no better witness to his character than his own words.”

As the curator of the #ToddlerinChief thread, I can assure you that this will drive the president bonkers. While observed instances of toddler behavior from the president have skyrocketed since August, his peak toddler output came in late August and early September of 2018. It was when that op-ed landed at the same time as Bob Woodward’s “Fear” and Sen. John McCain’s funeral.

This column, however, is not about Trump but about the Beltway reaction to this book. Anonymous’s return has inspired a fair amount of derision within the chattering class. Axios reporter Jonathan Swan tweeted, “Is this douchebag still quietly, oh so quietly, saving the republic? Spare us.” Soledad O’Brien wrote, “Don’t be an anonymous coward.” You get the gist.

This reaction is surprising to me. As the announcement noted, the author has taken no advance (the easiest and safest way for authors to make money) and intended to donate a large fraction of the royalties to nonprofit organizations. That is certainly more altruistic than most authors I know. As Politico’s Jack Shafer noted Wednesday, an awful lot of folks in Washington talk to reporters under the cloak of anonymity. Madison and Hamilton published the Federalist Papers under the guise of “Publius.” This anonymous senior official is not even remotely in the league of the Founding Fathers, but Shafer is not wrong about how well that op-ed has aged:

“Time has been remarkably good to Anonymous’ op-ed. When first published, it seemed vague, unnecessarily guarded and excessively self-congratulatory about its own courage. But read in the context of what we’ve learned since about resistance by senior officials to President Donald Trump’s orders, the op-ed seems a lot smarter. The op-ed boasted that the Trump administration was filled with many senior administration officials ‘working diligently from within to frustrate’ parts of Trump’s ‘agenda and his worst inclinations.’ A steady stream of news stories has appeared – and continues to appear almost daily – confirming the assertion of aggressive sandbagging of the president by top administration officials.”

So why the blowback? I suspect because this announcement happened during the same moment that a number of civil service and political appointees have demonstrated far more courage than the anonymous senior official. The author of “A Warning” still has the cloak of anonymity. Current and former officials such as Laura Cooper, Fiona Hill, William Taylor, Marie Yovanovitch, Michael McKinley, George Kent and Philip Reeker defied the Trump White House and agreed to testify in front of the House impeachment inquiry. Unlike the author of “A Warning,” they don’t have the luxury of thinking about lucrative book contracts; they are probably concerned about their mortgages and their legal fees. Nonetheless, they have all spoken truth to power in a far braver and riskier way than the op-ed writer.

The contrast between these people and, say, Jim Mattis is also striking. Ever since he stepped down, the former defense secretary has been attempting to walk a tightrope between discretion and discussion about his time in the Trump administration, but with a strong bias toward the former. He has gotten even more closemouthed about Trump since plumping his book on Sunday morning talk shows. Despite many commentators begging him to start talking, he keeps acting like a retired military officer rather than a former civilian official. Even though former military officers are speaking out about Trump, the most Mattis can do is joke about him.

Let’s stipulate that those testifying as part of the House impeachment inquiry deserve praise for greater political bravery than Mattis or the anonymous official. And sure, I would love for Mattis or Rex Tillerson or H.R. McMaster or John Kelly to be more forthcoming about Trump’s unfitness for office.

But perhaps we need to judge the political courage of these folks against a slightly different standard. Like, say, members of Congress.

Ten days ago, after the Trump White House announced the 2020 Group of Seven summit would be hosted at his Doral resort but before Trump backed down, Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., praised the announcement, saying, “It may seem careless politically, but on the other hand there’s tremendous integrity in his boldness and his transparency.” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said, “There’s no conflict of interest in holding anything in the great state of Florida.” When Trump backed down, it was not because of these two clowns. And then there are the GOP members of the House of Representatives.

This is an awfully long way from John Kennedy writing, “When party and officeholder differ as to how the national interest is to be served, we must place first the responsibility we owe not to our party or even to our constituents, but to our individual consciences.”

In a party filled with toadies and sycophants, any form of backbone or dissent from “the genius of our great President” mantra should be welcomed by critics of this administration. In normal times, I would want John Kelly to flatly state that Trump is unfit for office. In these times, well, I can live with Kelly telling the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker, “Someone has got to be a guide that tells (Trump) that you either have the authority or you don’t, or Mr. President, don’t do it. Don’t hire someone that will just nod and say, ‘That’s a great idea Mr. President.’ Because you will be impeached.”

Watergate did not end Richard Nixon because Deep Throat came forward out of the goodness of his heart. It happened in part because Mark Felt was hoping to use the scandal to advance his own career. One can praise the political courage of people like Yovanovitch or Cooper without rejecting what anonymous officials have to say in books. In a world in which GOP members of Congress are terrified of the base, even mild forms of dissent from the party line should be encouraged.

THE CALL — Monday, October 28, 2019