Trump Fog
The true make of a person is evident in the company they keep and those who prosper in their shadow
The headlines tell you all you need to know. For more than three years, since he glided down that elevator with a smug grin on his face, President Trump has dominated one story after another. Every conversation about politics or the state of America evokes his name. There’s no escape, not today, not tomorrow, not for years to come.
And yet, the current Trump fog obscures an unfortunate truth: the story was the same with President Obama. From the moment he announced his candidacy to the day he ceded power, Obama was the force around which public life revolved. We all took part in the circus. His loyalists, buoyed by the historic achievements of 2009-10, expected the world of him. His opponents, driven by a mix of extreme partisanship and—in some corners—racism, refused to compromise on any front. The media, thrilled by the prospect of political warfare, applied an “Obama won” or “Obama lost” lens to every development.
The common thread here is our intense focus on the individual, the leader, the person behind the desk making the final decisions. And it makes sense—the president matters immensely and always will. But as is the case with any role in life, the true make of a person is evident in the company they keep and those who prosper in their shadow.
If nothing comes of Robert Mueller’s investigation, if it’s determined that neither Trump nor his associates committed any crimes during the 2016 campaign, so be it. What remains is damning all the same. Paul Manafort. Michael Cohen. Steve Bannon. Michael Flynn. Scott Pruitt. All of them close advisers, confidants, or cabinet members. All of them reflections of Trump’s psyche and worldview. Outside the White House, Sean Hannity is riding high as an unofficial spokesman for the administration. Alex Jones and Richard Spencer take comfort in the president’s us-versus-them rhetoric. The list goes on.
This topic has been on my mind since I finished David McCullough’s expansive Truman biography. The 33rd president takes center stage, of course, but the book is just as much about the bonds Truman formed with his most trusted foreign policy advisers. George Marshall. Dwight Eisenhower. Dean Acheson. Clark Clifford. George Kennan. Averell Harriman. Each had some hand in the formation of NATO, the rise of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift. Like their president, these men were far from perfect and each made his share of mistakes. Nonetheless, their collective competence and selflessness spoke volumes of the man in the Oval Office.
Looking back on his time as secretary of state, Acheson wrote the following of his relationship with Truman:
“Each one understood his role and the other’s. We never got tangled up in it. I never thought I was the President, and he never thought he was the Secretary… It is important that the relations between the President and his Secretary be quite frank, sometimes to the point of being blunt. And you just have to be deferential. He is the President of the United States and you don’t say rude things to him – you say blunt things to him. Sometimes he doesn’t like it. That’s natural, but he comes back and you argue the thing out. But that’s your duty. You don’t tell him only what he wants to hear. That would be bad for him and for everyone else.”
“You don’t tell him only what he wants to hear.”
Imagine, if you can, a member of Trump’s administration saying something like that.
1. It starts at the top
"Presidential administrations are large, and it’s impossible to build one that’s entirely scandal-free. But you can vet people properly, you can drum-out malefactors who slip through the cracks, and you can build an institutional culture in which team members are rewarded for exposing impropriety rather than rewarded for covering it up." | Trump White House soaked in scandal
2. Out of sight, out of mind
The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide rose by nearly 3 million in 2017, to 68.5 million overall (a post-World War II high).
+ 325,000 Syrians have amassed at the country's borders with Jordan and Israel as they flee Russian-backed Syrian Army offensives.
3. A contradiction at the core of urban Democratic politics
"Upscale liberal whites 'who consider themselves committed to racial justice' tend to be 'NIMBYists ..., not living up to their affordable housing commitments and resisting apartment density around mass transportation stops.'" | The Democrats' Gentrification Problem
4. They're there until they're not
"Over the years I had learned that the traditions and institutions that protect us from living Hobbesian 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' lives are inherently fragile and demand careful tending. In America today, they are under serious stress." | The End of Intelligence
+ A long but powerful thread on liberal, democratic Europe and the staying power of the institutions America created in the aftermath of World War II.
5. Some good news?
A Harvard scientist says his company should soon be able to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at industrial scales.
6. Your next podcast episode
Listen to Carol Anderson on white rage in the age of Trump and how America has mistakenly encoded some of our national aspirations as achievements.