“[A]s director of the National
Economic Council, the 56-year-old Cohn has emerged as the adult in the room, a
sage presence in a West Wing that's perceived as new and untested. Colleagues
in the White House describe the president's top economic adviser as pragmatic
and solutions-focused—‘a doer, not a talker.’"— Michael Warren, “The Adult in the Room,” The Weekly Standard, March 3, 2017
A horror movie has been much in the news the last couple
of weeks, about a “fish out of water”—a character plunged into an alien
environment. But not long after the welcoming handshakes, this newcomer notices
unsettling signs, like uncomfortable responses or even silence when he asks
innocent questions of the staff, his host’s oddball remarks, or the latter’s
equally strange family.
Before long, the “fish” senses threats all around him,
with his identity and existence even at stake.
But Get Out is more than this year’s Oscar-winning Best Original
Screenplay. It’s preeminently the story of the Trump Administration and what it
does to top appointees who hope to cap careers of accomplishment by serving their
country. It polarizes, marginalizes, minimizes, then pulverizes them until any
real semblance of what they were is gone.
The resignation in the last several
days of one “fish,” Gary Cohn (pictured),
the chief economic policy adviser of Donald Trump, could not fail to be
remarked upon by the media, despite Fox News’ commentator Howard Kurtz’s contention that “Donald Trump is doing
exactly what he said he would do during the campaign, which he spent talking
tough on trade.”
But the Twittermination of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson brought a special moment
of recognition, not unlike the pivotal scene in one of Get Out’s cinematic inspirations, Rosemary’s Baby, when the heroine opens her eyes, grimly
understanding: "This is no dream! This is really happening!" All at
once, the sum of all fears began to crystallize: of managerial
disarray, of policy void of principle, of a President vested with power but
unchecked by prudence.
There is a word for a leader who produces such unnecessary
turmoil, in business and government: crazy. After Cohn vamoosed but before
Tillerson didn’t have the chance to, Wall
Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who has seen more than a few of the posturing fools who populate
Washington since her speechwriting days for Ronald Reagan, spelled out the
inevitable consequences of such leaders:
“Everything you’ve learned from life as a leader in
whatever sphere—business, local public service—tells you this: Crazy doesn’t
last. Crazy doesn’t go the distance. Crazy is an unstable element that when let
loose in an unstable environment, explodes…. If the president is the way he is
on a good day, what will he be like on a bad day? It all feels so dangerous.”
No, the Cohn departure was a big, meaty Media
Sandwich—right between communications director Hope Hicks’ more abrupt
departure and the long-rumored tossover of Tillerson. And I didn’t even mention
the additional speculations that more heads are about to roll, Sweeney
Todd-style: Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster, dutiful daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law without portfolio Jared
Kushner.
Why
the Race for the Exits?
But who can blame these officeholders for wanting to
go:
*before being subjected to pettiness (e.g., devout
Catholic Sean Spicer being denied the chance to meet the Pope);
* before Fox News airs unwarranted conjectures that appointees
dissenting in any way from the administration line are somehow part of a
mythical “deep state”;
* before finding themselves the object of a
Presidential evening phone tirade or 6 am Twitter blast;
* before the daily drip-drip-drip of leaks about the
President’s unhappiness with their latest press appearance;
* before former Capitol Hill “friends” question
their loyalty to the administration’s agenda;
* before hearing that the President has an
unflattering nickname for you (e.g., “Mr. Magoo” for attorney-General Jeff
Sessions);
*before the President jokes about comparing his IQ
level with yours, to your disadvantage;
* before the summons by the special prosecutor;
* before their marriages collapse;
* before they realize they could have retired from
the private sector with far more wealth if they hadn’t been foolish enough to
start a job in their sixties for which they had no experience whatsoever (see
Tillerson);
* before the end of everything they value in life.
I love that phrase in the quote at the start of this
blog post: “the adult in the room.” Sometimes the media will vary the cliché
slightly to “the only adult in the
room” (emphasis added), but the point remains the same: no matter how much you
might disagree with the appointee about particular policies, he or she brings a
level of achievement, a nodding acquaintance with Establishment norms, a
serious mien—what used to be called, about one gray(haired) eminence after
another in each succeeding administration, “gravitas.”
My Google search of “adult in the room” and “Trump” turned
up a surprisingly large number of people associated with the term—not just Cohn
and Tillerson, but also Reince Priebus, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the
national-security triumvirate of Kelly, McMaster, and James “Mad Dog” Mattis. (Another
Administration ally, White House special counsel Ty Cobb, has even classified himself with Kelly as “the adults in the
room.”)
“For the first time, America has a president who
does not act like an adult. He is emotionally immature: he lies, taunts,
insults, bullies, rages, seeks vengeance, exalts violence, boasts, refuses to
accept criticism, all in ways that most parents would seek to prevent in their
own children. Thus the dynamic was established in the earliest days of the
administration: Trump makes messes, or threatens to make them, and Americans
look to the ‘adults’ to clean up for him. The ‘adults,’ in turn, send out
occasional little public signals that they are trying to keep Trump from
veering off course—to educate him, to make him grow up, to keep him under
control.”
When the President stops being unexpectedly charming
and starts bellowing in such a way as to make everyone in his presence fell
silent (much like Robert Shaw’s roguish Henry VIII visiting the home of Thomas
More in A Man for All Seasons), the
media-designated “adults” invariably wake up and, like Austin Powers, start
screaming “I've lost my mojo!” Naturally, they end up disregarded in public,
disparaged in private, and demoralized wherever they go.
Just as naturally, they are all but certain who the
villain responsible for this dastardly act is—and in this, the leakiest
administration in recent memory, their musings have found a way of boomeranging,
in a way that re-cements their credibility with the press at the cost of
further undercutting their already tenuous relationship with the President:
* Tillerson
refused last year to deny reports that he privately referred to Trump as a “moron.”
* McMaster
has become a marked man ever since published reports that he had labeled Trump,
in a private dinner party, an “idiot” and a “dope.”
* Kelly joked
to listeners at an event marking the 15th anniversary of the
Department of Homeland Security that “The last thing I wanted to do was walk
away from one of the great honors of my life, being Secretary of Homeland
Security. But I did something wrong and God punished me, I guess.”
(What was “something wrong”? Maybe Kelly’s remarks that
Trump’s thinking about a wall with Mexico has been “evolving.” The
implication—that the President’s initial campaign promises about the issue
amounted to little more than primordial ooze—did not sit well with the
President.)
Daily Twitter outrages from Trump have had the
unlikely effect of shielding his employees from the full glare of stances and
remarks that might have brought down on their heads sustained controversy, such
as:
*claiming that some immigrants were “too afraid” or
“too lazy” to apply for the Obama-era deportation protection program, called
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA (Kelly);
*blowing an uncertain trumpet on global human-rights
issues (Tillerson);
* praising
the President’s supposedly “clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global
community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses
engage and compete for advantage” (McMaster and Cohn, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year).
As the adults’ ineffectuality has been mercilessly
exposed, commentators’ patience with them has grown noticeably thinner. The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, for instance, wonders now if their public acquiescence merely meant
that, “by protecting the country from the consequences of an unhinged
president, they helped Trump consolidate his power while he learned how to
transcend restraints.”
Not even provoking the outrage of such liberals has
earned the adults any credit with their boss-child. Like fellow Irish Catholic
Kelly, I am given at times to expressing myself in the language of sin and
atonement—but I must say that my mortifications have never taken the public
form endured by the general and the other major Trump appointees.
Ongoing
Humiliation
The event that springs to mind—but hardly ends
there—occurred last summer, in the very first Cabinet meeting, when Trump
invited each secretary to speak—and each, right before TV cameras broadcasting
to a global audience, paid full homage, Soviet style, to the wisdom of the
supreme leader at their table, noting the “supreme privilege” (Vice President
Mike Pence’s words) of working for him. Even Priebus—already the subject of
nonstop speculation about how much longer he would last—thanked him for "the
opportunity and blessing to serve your agenda."
Only Gen. Mattis dared to veer from the script, but
you had to listen exceptionally hard to hear him do it. He, too, spoke of what
an “honor” it was, but it was not Trump he had in mind but “to represent the
men and women of the Department of Defense.”
It was a degradation ceremony, pure and simple.
But that was hardly the end of their humiliation. Because
their boss’ ego is so enormous that it requires constant attention—frequent
abject behavior by underlings that somehow still fails to sate him.
And yet, they have found one reason or
another to stick around. In the process, they sometimes take positions not only
at odds with longstanding policies maintained by both parties in prior
administrations but even with their own reputations for “moderation."
Apologists for the “adults” (and, one suspects,
sometimes the “adults” themselves, leaking furiously), when asked what
violations the group prevented, have replied that “adulthood” is, in such
cases, a matter more of personality and procedure than policy. Such a
“get-out-of-jail card” is losing its effectiveness now with the press, however,
and the “adults” end up increasingly sorry that they signed up for all the
aggravation.
In the meantime, if they ask themselves when and
where they should make a stand on some Trump, they increasingly face pointed
criticism about why they didn’t resign when it mattered.
For instance, what was so special about his work
that Cohn didn’t quit after Trump failed to denounce the Nazi/white supremacist
rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year, as the economic adviser was reported
to have considered?
Tax reform, you say? Please.
Let’s start with that word “reform,” which implies
something changed for the better, or, at least in the case of taxes,
simplified. But that was hardly the case with the tax cut.
All at once, it tilted the benefits of the tax
program decidedly toward the affluent (“You all just got a lot richer,” Trump
told guests at Mar-a-Lago) while making a hash of Republican longstanding
warnings (well, at least under Obama, not under Bush II or Reagan) about the
looming dangers of a growing deficit (an additional deficit of $1.5 trillion—funded,
if done, by cuts to Social Security and Medicare).
Last fall Cohn asked business executives how many
planned to increase employment salaries once they had Trump’s tax cuts in hand.
An embarrassingly small number raised their hands.
Cohn might have received a more vigorous response if he had
asked the attendees how many would use their tax-cut savings on corporate buybacks
of stock shares rather than on higher salaries, new plants or more
research-and-development spending. By the end of January, roughly 100 U.S.
companies had announced plans for buybacks, totaling more than $178 billion,
according to an analysis by Matt Phillips in The New York Times.
Unnecessary
Losses
Non-managerial employees gnash their teeth but go
along with foolhardy or even venal corporate heads, on the ground that even half-hearted
dissent can endanger their long-term futures.
But with the “adults in
the room,” that is hardly the case. Several, such as Tillerson and Cohn, cannot
be said to be suffering financially at all, and even the military figures could
earn a great deal on the speaking circuit if they choose to leave government
service now.
They had better consider their options quickly. The
reason is simple: “Everything Trump touches dies,” says Republican consultant
Rick Wilson.
Nearly 150 years ago, as America’s Gilded Age took
off, America’s elite were already reckoning the costs of compromise with
venality. “Nothing is lost save honor,” financier Jim Fisk is
reported to have quipped after losing a battle over control of a railroad to
rival J.P. Morgan.
Trump’s “adults in the room” would
understand perfectly.
(The accompanying photo of Gary Cohn,
released by the White House, was taken on July 25, 2017, at Regional Media Day
by Evan Walker.)
“We’ve had previous presidents with corrupt
political associates, presidents sloshing around in sex scandals and presidents
who appeared to have no clue of how to turn on the lights in the White House,
let alone run a government. But we've never had one who managed to hit all
three markers, while simultaneously using the nation's highest office to
further his private asset accumulation.”—Gail Collins, “Our Gold-Leaf
Presidency,” The New York Times, Apr.
19, 2018 
