Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune, trying to figure that out, scratches his head and notes, "... it’s hard to know if Bolton was fired for his bad ideas or his good ones."
Regarding those ideas:
He did have a few good ones. He distrusted North Korea’s intentions on nuclear weapons, and he reportedly objected to Trump’s June meeting with Kim Jong Un in the demilitarized zone. Trump’s declarations of love for Kim, a brutal tyrant who has made no real nuclear concessions, must have exasperated Bolton, with good reason. Trump’s craven pandering to the Kremlin directly contradicted Bolton’s view of Vladimir Putin as a mortal foe.But then there is this:
It cannot be entirely a bad thing when a president gets rid of a national security adviser notorious for arrogance, bellicosity, contempt for allies and a thirst for unnecessary wars.Chapman then goes on to provide a litany of Bolton's positions that are questionable, including a penchant for calling for regime change (Iran, Venezuela), and a tendency to see bombing as a first rather than last resort. When Trump recently called off an air strike against Iran in retaliation for Iran downing one of our drones, he was essentially overruling Bolton, who apparently advocated the bombing response.
Bolton didn't see eye to eye with Trump on many things. Jay Nordlinger points to circumstances that encapsulate Bolton's and Trump's disparate policy preferences:
Currently, Trump is withholding military aid to Ukraine and denying the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a White House visit. Apparently, this is because Trump is trying to force the Ukrainian government to intervene in U.S. presidential politics by launching an investigation of Joe Biden. Really. The Washington Post editorialized on this matter, here.When a president and his advisers are at loggerheads, that's usually thought to be a problem. In this case, I'm not so sure. Neither man is one to whom I would choose to grant policy-making responsibility, but in a weird way, they tended to cancel each other's worst traits out. Trump is wont to cozy up to some of the least trustworthy and admirable world leaders (Kim, Putin); it seems useful to have someone in the White House willing to stand up to the president regarding those dysfunctional behaviors. And it seems fair to say that Trump the populist isolationist is reluctant to go to war, which provided a necessary brake to Bolton's instincts to shoot first and ask questions later.
While Trump was in France, calling for the readmission of Russia to a group of democracies, John Bolton was in Kiev, laying a wreath at a memorial. He tweeted, “It was an honor to represent the American people in paying our solemn respects to Ukrainians who have died in the defense of their nation against Russian aggression.”
Bolton was fired (or quit) because he constrained and contradicted Trump. I confess my take on this is mixed. And which is better for the country and the world: Trump constrained or unconstrained?
It is not very good for the country when the best one can say about two policy makers (Trump and Bolton) is that their very bad ideas and very bad personal characteristics may have on occasion cancelled each other out.
ReplyDeleteThat was my thought.
DeleteIt goes along with people who say Trump is at least "transparent." It isn't very good for the country when the best that can be said for the president is that he is more shameless and stupid about covering up his sh*t than others we've had.
And yet ... a lot of people will vote for him because he's keeping out immigrants that threaten our WASP way of life, putting in judges that will overturn Roe v Wade, keeping unemployment low, and absolving them from worries about environmental concerns.
This election is down to black women and Millennials, as far as I can see.
This article was linked on Jim McCrea's e mail chain on Sept. 11. I'm not ready to give up the ghost on democracy yet. But the article makes the point that it is hard work, and I really think people need to wake up to that. Especially since the alternatives to democracy are not promising.
DeleteKatherine, I skipped the Rosenberg report when Jim linked to it because his emails are suddenly coming in on my gmail account, which is a pain in the neck to deal with. But my ex-boss sent me a link this morning, and I see it's all over the Web, being agreed with and argued with. I wrote him a long reply, agreeing in part and dissenting in part, which doesn't belong here. Do you want to open a thread on it?
DeleteTom, for now I'll just check back with Jim's thread. Next week maybe I'll open a thread here. For now, too distracted, getting ready for a trip.
DeleteIf you want to open a thread yourself with your reply to your ex-boss, go ahead, I'm sure it would be interesting.
DeleteWhen I think of the Trump "administration", I think of one of those Powerball drawings with the ping pong balls bouncing around and you don't know what is going to come out the chute. This is the Age of Stuff Happens.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sorry that Bolton got resigned, since he is such a warmonger. Even though he was right about Putin and the Russians. Wish it would happen to Stephen Miller.
ReplyDeleteWe can bet that Bolton's replacement will be a yes-man to Trump. He will probably also be an "acting" official. Not sure if Bolton's position was one requiring Senate approval. Apparently that is too much trouble to go to nowadays. Even if you still own the Senate.
I didn't know, until I saw the re-run of the Late Show, that a) the only thing Trump knew about Bolton is that he is "tough," and b) one of the reasons for canning him was that he offended America's #2 enemy and Trump's #1 foreign affairs adviser Kim Jung Un. The New York Times didn't have it. My local newspaper hasn't had it. But Stephen Colbert -- after a maudlin opening in honor of the day -- has it right here, Trump on tape and in his own words.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd1JaLpJIpA
There really is no hope.
Everyone knew both what Bolton was and what his agenda was when he was chosen by Trump. Since Trump does not seem to have a coherent plan in anything at all, the speculation at the time was whether he was finally getting one in the form of Bolton. Bolton has always been a super hawk, but his main aim has always been regime change in Iran.
ReplyDeleteBut Trump is always making it up as he goes along. He reacts. Only. I suspect that in general this is why Bolton was quit/fired. It's not so much that Bolton was sacked because Trump disagreed with his plan. It's that Bolton had a plan and Trump just shoots from the hip. Trump doesn't want to be "bound" by any plans or agendas. We can easily see this in the single news cycle "initiatives" that Trump tries to play out with everyone. They come and they go. He gets some kind of press boost and then it's forgotten about until he thinks he needs to have another.
Yes, I think you're on to something there. Trump has some loose goals that play to his base, but he resists anything that requires consistency in plan or policy.
DeleteBolton has always been consistent in his stand against operators in the Axis of Evil. Trump doesn't want to have to take a hardline stance with these people, I suspect because he doesn't want to screw up private biz deals he's doing with them.
Cuz let's not forget that Trump's primary goal is enriching Trump.
Yeah, enriching himself, playing to his base, making himself look like the guy on-camera who gets to say "You're fired", bedding babes - they're all means to the end of ego strokement. Narcissist.
DeleteThere is suddenly, among the chattering class, a lot of talk about process. Which isn't bad. One concise explanation of why process is important came from Brett McGurk on Morning Edition (NPR) Wednesday. McGurk was part of the Bush, Obama and, until last year, Trump administrations. He said:
Delete"(T)he president just kind of operates by chaos. And it leads to incoherence. And it leads to, you know, being 10 minutes away from a military strike on Iran without really thinking through the consequences. It leads to inviting the Taliban to Camp David without thinking through whether that's a good idea."
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/759699234/boltons-exit-leaves-u-s-without-a-permanent-national-security-adviser
McGurk said that Bolton fit into the chaos-into-incoherence mode himself, that he was basically a one-man show and the National Security Council staff was bypassed or driven away. Which fits with Trump's modus operandi. But: Some day -- if Making America Great Again allows -- there is going to be a different Republican administration. And it will have no talent pool to draw from because lack of process in the current administration is draining the pool rather than developing the people in it. Just another long-term Trump disaster that is incalculable.
"Some day -- if Making America Great Again allows -- there is going to be a different Republican administration. And it will have no talent pool to draw from because lack of process in the current administration is draining the pool rather than developing the people in it."
DeleteYes. More generally, which will be the case for the GOP in the post-Trump era: can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again, or will his shards have to be swept into a dustpan and poured into the bin?
Probably I'm being too dramatic; the GOP is still seemingly pretty healthy at a state governance level, so the "minor leagues" may still produced big-league competitors. But much more worrisome, in my mind, than the talent drain Tom mentioned is the philosophy drain. What does the GOP stand for these days: hatred of immigrants? Trade wars? Neglect of alliances? That's not exactly a philosophical foundation that I'd want to build a country on. Really, it's just a jarful of whims and emotions.
"McGurk said that Bolton fit into the chaos-into-incoherence mode himself, that he was basically a one-man show and the National Security Council staff was bypassed or driven away. "
DeleteThat phenomenon may be an effect of Trump's chief criterion for filling major administration appointments: he likes what the fellow said on television. At this point, I think we can conclude that Governance By Fox News Guest Stars has its limitations.
"...jarful of whims and emotions." Pretty much that's the problem in a nutshell that the Rosenberg article was talking about. Somehow people have to engage their brains again.
Delete