For those of you who have not read the script
of the “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” printed by
the NY Times, I have included it below my signature.
I presume that this person is acting in good
faith. It has seemed clear to me that a
number of people have been acting in this fashion. Whether or not you agree
with the decision to write this letter, you might still conclude that the
writer has integrity.
I believe this person should identify
himself/herself and resign for the following reasons:
- Unless the writer is
identified, some people will believe or wonder whether the letter is a
hoax.
- While I presume that this
person is acting in good faith, it is hard to know how much to respect
this letter without knowing who wrote it.
- The NY Times says the
writer is a senior member of the Trump administration, but how do we know
that and how do we know what the NY Times considers to be “senior”?
- It seems that the
individual is a Trump appointee, but how do we know for sure?
- Clearly, the letter will
lead to a lot of effort to discover who the writer is and to a lot more
distrust, chaos and potential finger-pointing in the Trump
administration. A number of people
could lose their jobs because of this letter. The letter indicates that the writer did
not want such an outcome.
- Other staff members may want
to protect the writer from being discovered or defend him/her once
discovered. That would put their
jobs in danger.
- Resignation should not be
a disaster because, as the letter-writer points out, others are also
performing in such fashion.
- If the letter-writer is
concerned that others would be identified if his/her identity is exposed,
then the letter should not have been written because that risk still
exists without self-identification.
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the
Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded
colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst
inclinations.
President
Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American
leader.
It’s
not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly
divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the
House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The
dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials
in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts
of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I
would know. I am one of them.
To
be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the
administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made
America safer and more prosperous.
But
we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to
act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is
why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our
democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses
until he is out of office.
The root
of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he
is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision
making.
Although he was elected as
a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by
conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has
invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them
outright.
In
addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of
the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and
anti-democratic.
Don’t get
me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of
the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax
reform, a more robust military and more.
But these
successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership
style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the
White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will
privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and
actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings
with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and
his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless
decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is
literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the
next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office
meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d
made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would
be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White
House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in
private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the
West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be
cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are
adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to
do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result
is a two-track presidency.
Take
foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference
for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for
the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute
observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating
on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling
and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as
peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia,
for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as
punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained
for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further
confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States
continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his
national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold
Moscow accountable.
This isn’t
the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the
instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of
invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing
the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we
will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until —
one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not
what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have
allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to
be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it
best in his farewell letter. All Americans should
heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of
uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
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