Donald Trump, his administration, and many of his supporters have gone out of their way to deflect criticism of themselves through invoking a "Deep State" that is full of democratic operatives attempting to use the arcane bureaucracy of the federal government to subvert the will of the people.
The last few days have led some of these supporters to conclude that they are right.
The current crisis became more intense when the press began to report on the contents of Bob Woodward's Fear. It is reported to show how various officials in the West Wing have worked to contain and redirect Donald Trump, preventing him from doing what he has ordered them to do (such as assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and withdrawing from NAFTA). The officials implicated by Woodward are high-ranking (Jim Mattis, Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Reince Priebus, and Rob Porter have all featured prominently in the reporting) and have been close to the president.
While the White House's official response is that all of this is fiction, it carries more credibility than similar books by Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Wolff. All of these accounts also fit with the bulk of the reporting on the way in which the White House operates, which explains the reason that there are so much leaks--everyone is afraid that their colleagues are out to get them (much like contestants on a reality TV show...) and so they are continually trying to shape the narrative in the press into one that is favorable for them. Since the President gets so much of his information from television news, it is apparently more effective to drive the discussion on Fox & Friends than it is to present a briefing to the President in person. The chaos and backbiting in the West Wing is the most plausible explanation of the evidence that has become public, and so it is being taken seriously as a description of Trump administration.
Which leads us to the New York Times Op Ed from yesterday. An anonymous senior administration official, apparently convinced that the cat was out of the bag with Woodward's book, wrote about the work he and others within the administration were doing to contain the president for the good of the country.
All of this is extraordinary.
The closest parallels for the American presidency appear to be the final 18 months of Woodrow Wilson's administration because of cognitive decline, the final year of Nixon's administration because of alcohol and drug abuse, and the final months of the Reagan administration because of Alzheimer's.
What is different about those situations, however, is that none of it was widely known at the time. This time around, it is open to the public and already shaping domestic and foreign policy. It is appropriate to describe this as a Constitutional crisis because the system is not designed for the President to rule as a puppet, like the effigy of a medieval king that ruled in between the death of the old monarch and the coronation of the new, operating as a figure head that the federal government must work around. None of this fits with the Article II description of the presidency.
The Constitutional solutions for this kind of situation are impeachment by congress or removal from office for incapacity according to the 25th amendment. I do not expect either to happen in the foreseeable future.
While some see all of this as confirmation of the conservative media's description of a Deep State conspiracy, it is important to note that what Woodward and the New York Time's Op-Ed reveal is actually something quite different.
Rather than a plot managed by career government employees with democratic leanings to thwart the will of the people, we have a charade perpetrated by elected Republicans and the President's own political appointees. Congressional republicans like Devin Nunes have gone out of their way to protect the President from the consequences of his own corruption and incompetence, and are pitching such obstruction of justice (I lack other words for it) as the reason that they must continue to control the House. Meanwhile, administration officials continue to make possible Trump's tenure in office by containing him, which allows them to use the powers of the presidency for their own policy goals, whether or not the fit with Trump's own desires.
In other words, what has been pinned on the "Deep State" is in fact the work of Republicans who believe that the risk that Donald Trump's instability and incompetence presents to the country is acceptable because it allows them to appoint supreme court justices, cut taxes, and deregulate the economy. To accomplish those goals, they have worked to maintain a plausible fiction that Trump is a capable leader who is running the country well and should receive credit for the current economy. Those who reassure Fox News' viewers that everything is fine are in fact the man behind the curtain, trying to manage things while hiding the fact that they are doing so for fear that the real story would strip them of their power.
Trump's supporters will undoubtedly be frustrated and feel insulted by these events. Many will likely still think that the President should be unfettered, which is a situation that I fear.
I don't know what will happen. I don't know why Republicans find the possibility of a President Pence so untenable. But whatever happens, recent revelations about the President and the management of the White House seem to have changed the conversation in a way that seems likely to endure.
The last few days have led some of these supporters to conclude that they are right.
The current crisis became more intense when the press began to report on the contents of Bob Woodward's Fear. It is reported to show how various officials in the West Wing have worked to contain and redirect Donald Trump, preventing him from doing what he has ordered them to do (such as assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and withdrawing from NAFTA). The officials implicated by Woodward are high-ranking (Jim Mattis, Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Reince Priebus, and Rob Porter have all featured prominently in the reporting) and have been close to the president.
While the White House's official response is that all of this is fiction, it carries more credibility than similar books by Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Wolff. All of these accounts also fit with the bulk of the reporting on the way in which the White House operates, which explains the reason that there are so much leaks--everyone is afraid that their colleagues are out to get them (much like contestants on a reality TV show...) and so they are continually trying to shape the narrative in the press into one that is favorable for them. Since the President gets so much of his information from television news, it is apparently more effective to drive the discussion on Fox & Friends than it is to present a briefing to the President in person. The chaos and backbiting in the West Wing is the most plausible explanation of the evidence that has become public, and so it is being taken seriously as a description of Trump administration.
Which leads us to the New York Times Op Ed from yesterday. An anonymous senior administration official, apparently convinced that the cat was out of the bag with Woodward's book, wrote about the work he and others within the administration were doing to contain the president for the good of the country.
All of this is extraordinary.
The closest parallels for the American presidency appear to be the final 18 months of Woodrow Wilson's administration because of cognitive decline, the final year of Nixon's administration because of alcohol and drug abuse, and the final months of the Reagan administration because of Alzheimer's.
What is different about those situations, however, is that none of it was widely known at the time. This time around, it is open to the public and already shaping domestic and foreign policy. It is appropriate to describe this as a Constitutional crisis because the system is not designed for the President to rule as a puppet, like the effigy of a medieval king that ruled in between the death of the old monarch and the coronation of the new, operating as a figure head that the federal government must work around. None of this fits with the Article II description of the presidency.
The Constitutional solutions for this kind of situation are impeachment by congress or removal from office for incapacity according to the 25th amendment. I do not expect either to happen in the foreseeable future.
While some see all of this as confirmation of the conservative media's description of a Deep State conspiracy, it is important to note that what Woodward and the New York Time's Op-Ed reveal is actually something quite different.
Rather than a plot managed by career government employees with democratic leanings to thwart the will of the people, we have a charade perpetrated by elected Republicans and the President's own political appointees. Congressional republicans like Devin Nunes have gone out of their way to protect the President from the consequences of his own corruption and incompetence, and are pitching such obstruction of justice (I lack other words for it) as the reason that they must continue to control the House. Meanwhile, administration officials continue to make possible Trump's tenure in office by containing him, which allows them to use the powers of the presidency for their own policy goals, whether or not the fit with Trump's own desires.
In other words, what has been pinned on the "Deep State" is in fact the work of Republicans who believe that the risk that Donald Trump's instability and incompetence presents to the country is acceptable because it allows them to appoint supreme court justices, cut taxes, and deregulate the economy. To accomplish those goals, they have worked to maintain a plausible fiction that Trump is a capable leader who is running the country well and should receive credit for the current economy. Those who reassure Fox News' viewers that everything is fine are in fact the man behind the curtain, trying to manage things while hiding the fact that they are doing so for fear that the real story would strip them of their power.
Trump's supporters will undoubtedly be frustrated and feel insulted by these events. Many will likely still think that the President should be unfettered, which is a situation that I fear.
I don't know what will happen. I don't know why Republicans find the possibility of a President Pence so untenable. But whatever happens, recent revelations about the President and the management of the White House seem to have changed the conversation in a way that seems likely to endure.
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