Henceforth, Only Invertebrates And Opportunists Need Apply

Writing for the conservative Washington Examiner, Salena Zito reminded her readers that "In the wake of an election where Republicans lost 40 seats, Trump has careened, strategy-free, toward a shutdown, negotiating only with himself. He's blowing up the staff that gave wary Republicans confidence, and in the realm of foreign policy, he's abandoning the Reaganite conservative part of his coalition to the consternation of Israel and the delight of dictators in Moscow and Ankara. Trump won by bringing wary nationalists and populists into a conservative party. But the tail cannot wag the dog. Trump's coalition is big enough to govern as long as he agrees to preserve the four legs of the conservative stool: babies, guns, tax cuts, and a muscular foreign policy... Trump did not create this conservative/populist coalition. His presidency is the result of it. The past few weeks show he’s either forgotten that or he believes that doesn’t matter anymore."

The past few weeks? Trump's entire life has shown what his capabilities are and aren't. That he somehow slipped into the White House-- whether because of Putin or because of a hopelessly flawed electorate or because of a Democratic Party establishment determined to spit in the eye of America-- is a dangerous condemnation of our country that needs to be seriously examined and ameliorated. As for Trump... absolutely hopeless. There is no amelioration, just an exit. Last week, Eliot Cohen, a very conservative professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins and a pillar of the Military Industrial Complex, wrote that the departure of Jim Mattis shows you can't serve both Trump and America. His kind of conservative understands Trump's danger and his toxicity. Trump gave up on Mattis as soon as he got an inkling that he wasn't really a "mad dog," which was the only reason Trump chose him as Defense Secretary. Trump was not looking for what Cohen describes as "a resolute military leader who was a reader and a thinker." If Trump had been told you could "give him a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and he would compare it with the other two editions that he already owned," he would have climbed out a bathroom window rather than give him a position. Trump, wrote Cohen, "had a vague notion of the killer part when he appointed Mattis. He had no notion of the morally and strategically informed restraint, of the intellectual sophistication, of the selflessness." One thing about Trump is that he has never hired anyone good or sought to be in the company of anyone good. The best executives look for people who have traits and abilities that strengthen what they themselves have to offer. Trump is the opposite of that. You can count on him hiring only the worst people. He always has and he always will. Stephen Miller is a pure Trumpian hire.

It was not Mattis’s idea to become secretary of defense, and indeed, he may not have been the best pick for the job in normal times. But then again, 2017 was anything but a normal time, and even those who believed that the job should in principle go to a real civilian rather than a retired general were relieved that Mattis took it. In office, he had to spend most of his time buttressing the alliances that the president despised, and affirming values of fairness and legality that Trump could not comprehend. Success in government is often measured less by the brilliant things one does than by the stupidities one prevents. By that standard, Mattis’s tenure as secretary of defense was a success.

His story, however, has a larger significance. From the unlikely victory of Trump in the November 2016 election to the present, some have argued that principled patriots could serve in high office, retain their character, and either mitigate the damage or do some positive good. To be sure, they would need their red lines, their signed-but-undated letters of resignation. But they could pull it off. Though they might be maligned by irresponsible enemies of the administration, they would serve the country, and do so more honorably than mere critics.

Mattis indeed had his walking points, and he leaves with his head held high. But he is alone. The clusters of sub-Cabinet officials who privately boasted about their walking points have, with very few exceptions, stuck it out. They give sickly smiles when, at a seminar or dinner party, someone describes the president’s character as it is; they give no evidence of sticking their necks out to take positions that might incur the wrath of the America Firsters; they have taken the mad king’s shilling, and they are sticking with the king.

The departure of Jim Mattis from government service is proof that you cannot have it all. You have to walk if you are to remain the human being you were, or conceived yourself being, before you went in. He alone refused to curry favor, to pander at the painful televised Cabinet sessions, or to praise someone who deserved none of it. In the end, he could not do his job and serve the country as he knew it had to be served. No one could.

Henceforth, the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and careerists. If they had policy convictions, they will meekly accept their evisceration. If they know a choice is a disaster, they will swallow hard and go along. They may try to manipulate the president, or make some feeble efforts to subvert him, but in the end they will follow him. And although patriotism may motivate some of them, the truth is that it will be the title, the office, the car, and the chance to be in the policy game that will keep them there.

They may think wistfully of the unflinching Sir Thomas More of Robert Bolt’s magnificent play about integrity in politics, A Man for All Seasons. But they will be more like Richie Rich, More’s protégé who could have chosen a better path, but who succumbed to the lure of power. And the result will be policies that take this country, its allies, and international order to disasters small and large.



Jim Mattis’s life has been shaped by the Marine motto: semper fidelis, always faithful. Against the odds, he remained faithful to his beliefs, to his subordinates, to the mission, to the country. The president who appointed him to the office might have as the motto on his phony coat of arms nunquam fida, never loyal. His career has been one of betrayal-- of business partners, of customers, of subordinates, of his wives, and as we may very possibly learn from Robert Mueller, of his country. The two codes of conduct could never really coexist, and so they have not.

Chris Christie was on This Week yesterday and pointedly announced he was addressing the audience directly, and then compared Trump to "a 72 year old relative whose behavior they were attempting to change... When people get older they become more and more convinced of the fact that what they’re doing is the right thing and it becomes harder to convince them otherwise." That was around the same time we learned that the brittle and somewhat senile Señor T, enraged when someone finally told him what Mattis' letter was actually saying about him, kicked his Secretary of Defense out-- Mattis had planned to stay through February to ensure a smooth transition-- and replaced him with Mattis' deputy, Patrick Shanahan, now Acting Secretary of Defense. By the time the Trumpanzee Regime is put out of its misery, every confirmable position will be held my an acting this or an acting that. And the invertebrates.

I don't want to see Michael Bloomberg wind up with the Democratic nomination by any stretch of the imagination but yesterday he was right on target when he wrote that "the past week all too perfectly exemplified [Trump's] destructive effect on competent government in Washington-- and it should give all Americans, in all parties, cause for concern... At the halfway mark of this terrible presidency, one has to wonder how much more the country can take... Unless something changes-- unless, in particular, Republicans in Congress start showing some spine-- two more years might be enough to test whether we can sustain Trump’s model of bad government. This past week, we got a glimpse of what the beginning of the collapse may look like-- and what it may ultimately cost us."