A Warning

by Anonymous

Increasingly, I’ve doubted whether this type of environment is at all effective, let alone sustainable. Can Americans put their faith in a cabal of unelected officials to maintain stability? More importantly, should they?

Through a toxic combination of amorality and indifference, the president has failed to rise to the occasion in fulfilling his duties.

His turbulent demeanor and off-the-wall comments—like his continued fixation with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who were leaving government—were not part of a television persona. They were the real thing. His management of the upstart operation was, well, not really management at all.

would walk out of briefings frustrated. “He is the most distracted person I’ve ever met,” one of the president’s security lieutenants confessed. “He has no fucking clue what we are talking about!” More changes were ordered to cater to Trump’s peculiarities. Documents were dramatically downsized, and position papers became sound bites. As a result, complex proposals were reduced to a single page (or ideally a paragraph) and translated into Trump’s “winners and losers” tone.

Others discovered that if they walked into the Oval Office with a simple graphic that Trump liked, it would more than do the trick. We might hear about it for days, in fact. He would hold on to the picture, waving it around at us in meetings. “Did you see this? Can you believe this? This is beautiful. Something truly special. Dan!” He might summon the White House’s social media guru, who sits just outside the Oval Office. “Let’s tweet this out, okay? Here’s what I want to say…” That way the public would get to share in his excitement, too.

Seeing this type of behavior was both educating and jarring to the burgeoning Steady State. It was a visceral lesson that we weren’t just appointees of the president. We were glorified government babysitters.

These mini crises didn’t happen once or twice at the administration’s outset. They became the norm, a semi-regular occurrence with aftershocks that could be felt for days. Some aides grew so worn down by the roller coaster of presidential whims that they started encouraging him to hold more campaign rallies, putting aside the fact that it wasn’t campaign season. The events had the dual benefit of giving Trump something “fun” to do and also getting him out of town, where he would hypothetically do less damage.

At any given time during the Trump administration, there are at least a handful of top aides on the brink of resigning, either out of principle or exhaustion.

In the history of American democracy, we have had undisciplined presidents. We have had incurious presidents. We have had inexperienced presidents. We have had amoral presidents. Rarely if ever before have we had them all at once.

“Why do people stay?” a close friend asked me at the time. “You all should quit. He’s a mess.” “That’s why,” I responded. “Because he’s a mess.”

When Trump’s flip-flopping is about something like new army uniforms (“very expensive,” he once lamented, but on the other hand, “beautiful”), it is exhausting. When it’s about air strikes, it’s terrifying.

“What should we do?” the briefer asked nervously. “He wants us to scrap everything the agency was planning.” “Relax,” I assured him. “We aren’t going to do anything. I swear he’ll change his mind tomorrow.” I was wrong. The president changed his mind later that afternoon.

The United States was molded by people who left home in faraway places, by idealistic risk takers and hard workers who fought the odds to reach a literal new world. Our republic was not rooted in “blood and soil.” It was rooted in a shared aspiration for a fresh start.

When you bump into former officials in the course of Washington business, they ask what it’s like to operate in this type of environment. I’ll tell you. It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants try to catch him. You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.