Fear: Trump in the White House

[_MeDotOrg]

If they believe he's not competent, then they should follow the Constitution otherwise they themselves are subverting the Constitution!

The NYT piece anonymous author says they wanted to invoke the 25th early on but chose not to because they didn't want to initiate a constitutional crisis.

Well, what in the hell do they think they're doing when admitting that they're trying to thwart the work of the President if not drawing us into a constitional crisis?

Do we really want insiders yanking paperwork off the desk of our President? A President, whether we like it or not, was elected by our own democratic process?

Somebody needs to put up or shut up in this case because until they do, all are suspect.

The 25th Amendment was not ratified until 1967. Edith Wilson had run the country for the last months of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency after Woodrow suffered a stroke. The Presidency has shown an ability to heal itself when wounded by the incapacity or inadequacy of the current occupant.

Not the President. The Presidency.

And when you work for the President, this is not a job where you walk away and work for the President of another country (unless you're Manafort, Flynn or Gates.) You work in the Executive Branch at the pleasure of the President to serve the President. But as Chief Executive, the President takes an oath to uphold the Constitution. Our ultimate loyalty is to something other than the President himself. I can appreciate the horns of the dilemma that hook someone disgusted with the Trump Presidency, but being fearful that the country will crumple further if the Executive Branch is populated by more incompetent yes-men.

Tell you one thing, Jersey Girl. It's not the Trump Presidency, but rather how the nation responds to the Trump Presidency that will define this country.

[_honorentheos]

The New York Times piece anonymous author says they wanted to invoke the 25th early on but chose not to because they didn't want to initiate a constitutional crisis.

Well, what in the hell do they think they're doing when admitting that they're trying to thwart the work of the President if not drawing us into a constitional crisis?

Do we really want insiders yanking paperwork off the desk of our President? A President, whether we like it or not, was elected by our own democratic process?

Somebody needs to put up or shut up in this case because until they do, all are suspect.

The author is conservative, deeply enough so that their claimed successes are all the things progressives hate most such as tax reform and the judicial overhaul. Trumps supporters are much more of a political threat to a Republican than a Democrat. It seems to me they are playing politics. If the Dems take Congress and impeach Trump, it still leaves Pence in as President with 2020 on the horizon and the Dems having pissed off Trumps base. If his base thought it was the Republicans who removed him from office...the war for the soul of the Republican Party would explode.

[_MeDotOrg]

Finished the book today. If you read All the President's Men or The Final Days, you've been down this road.

Woodward's books are sketches in the first draft of history. He interviews a lot of people about their recollection of events and and assembles those stories together in a narrative form. It's as if you are reading raw intelligence, where the narrative is implied, not really spelled out. You're looking at all of these snippets like pieces of a collage. Only when you step back and stitch the snippets together that the picture begins to emerge.

In the anonymous New York Times editorial, the author says:

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.

That statement very much is the way I feel after reading Fear. The portrait of the President that emerges is a man who believes his success in life is a result of flying by the seat of his pants, and taking the best transactional path in the moment. His principles are his opinions, and his opinions are not in service to anything other than himself. The President's ideology is the selling of the idea, no matter what the idea represents. More than once the book chronicles the President casually changing positions without regard to facts or principles.

Beyond the portrait of the President, the book shows that there is a power vacuum created by the President's penchant for adapting the position of the last person with whom he speaks. Who speaks for the President? Trump seems to enjoy creating an environment where the lines of authority and control are constantly changing based on the transaction now.

For me, the book was not an earth-shattering revelation, and again, a first draft of history. Bob Woodward is not Barbara Tuchman. But the book brings into sharper focus much of what has been said off the record about Trump since before the election: the country is in the hands of a capricious narcissist whose primary allegiance is to himself.

[_honorentheos]

Thanks for sharing the book review, MeDotOrg. It may have saved me $18.

[_MeDotOrg]

I remember loving All the President's Men and The Final Days. But This crisis has more Deep Throats than Linda Lovelace in a hall of mirrors, and living in the 24 hour news cycle of cable and the internet means there were very few surprises. That's aren't to say there are not some interesting detail, especially with respect to South Korea, Russia and Intelligence sources, but the private persona of Trump is not a lot different than what you would imagine.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

For me, the book was not an earth-shattering revelation, and again, a first draft of history. Bob Woodward is not Barbara Tuchman. But the book brings into sharper focus much of what has been said off the record about Trump since before the election: the country is in the hands of a capricious narcissist whose primary allegiance is to himself.

Ironically, perhaps, Ms. Tuchman assigns a Law to the observation of history, which she, of course, calls Tuchman's Law:

"The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).

I'm wait-listed at my library for the book so I'll weigh in when I read it, too.

- Doc