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babylonsister

(171,065 posts) Mon Dec 10, 2018, 10:54 AM Dec 2018

James Fallows: Trump's Presidency Is a Test of Character

Trump’s Presidency Is a Test of Character
Some who enter this president’s service are changed for the worse, while others are revealed to have been that way all along.
7:45 AM ET
James Fallows
National correspondent at The Atlantic

John Kelly’s departure from the White House is a reminder of an important but under-publicized distinction among those who have chosen to support or work for Donald Trump.The distinction is between those whom Trump has made bad, and those who have been revealed as bad through their association with this man. (There’s also a small “not yet bad” category, which we will get to later on.)

In the first category,“made bad,” are people who in other circumstances might have made harder, higher-minded choices. They might have chosen to stand on principle, to take the long view, to look for reasonable compromises, to defend the norms and values of American institutions—and, overall, to behave in a way they’d be happy to talk about later on. Many of these people have actually made those choices in previous walks of life.

The way Trump has “made them bad” is to put them in a corner where day-by-day they have to choose: Do they maintain their place within his organization, sheltered against his ridicule or wrath? Do they remain, even if it means accepting Trump’s lies, lying when necessary themselves, ignoring the standards they’d apply to any other leaders, and renouncing the policy goals they had defended through all of their previous careers? For today’s Republicans, those goals would include at least a lip-service interest in reducing deficits, a ferocious opposition to talk of trade wars and tariffs, at least a rhetorical reverence for the military, and an argument that immigration was overall a plus for the United States. This is to say nothing of the modern GOP’s hair-trigger willingness to investigate possible conflicts-of-interest or abuses of executive power by the Clinton and Obama administrations.

To stay connected to Trump, Republicans have had to detach themselves from the previous lives and values. In making that choice, some people who in other circumstance would have been “good”—by their own lights, and the outside world’s—have been made bad.

The most heartbreaking illustration in this category is of course H.R. McMaster. When the original call came to serve as Trump’s national-security adviser, replacing the notorious Michael Flynn, McMaster likely felt duty-bound to accept. He was still an active-duty three-star Army general, and this was his new posting. He could accept, or retire and resign.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-kelly-and-trumps-test-character/577708/