After a madcap week capped by the ouster of his expletives-undeleted communications chief Anthony Scaramucci, President Donald Trump declared in an early morning tweet Monday that there is “No WH chaos.”
Really?
When a president during his first six months fails to move any meaningful legislation through Congress, including a long-promised repeal of Obamacare, due to hostility from members of his own party — isn’t that chaos?
When those same Republicans refuse to go along with Trump’s efforts to shove aside Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump called “VERY weak” but who shows no signs of going gently — might that not suggest chaos?
When infighting among Trump’s top White House aides reaches a point where Communications Director Scaramucci (aka “the Mooch”) called then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic” — even Trump fans might detect a whiff of chaos.
Even for an executive who thrives on palace intrigue, Trump seems to be craving a little less. He replaced Priebus as chief of staff with retired four-star Marine general John F. Kelly and gave him the authority — lacking until now — to directly supervise grasping and back-stabbing administration officials. Kelly’s first move: Firing Scaramucci after less than two weeks on the job.
Time will tell whether Kelly will be able to instill discipline and order in the West Wing, and whether those efforts will be undercut by Trump’s favorite tool of disruption: Twitter. But even if the White House becomes a more orderly place inside its walls, skepticism is growing about whether the president will be able to dodge questions outside about an unholy alliance with Russia or persuade Congressional Republicans to advance his agenda (that is, if and when he articulates that agenda).
“Anyone in a position of responsibility in GOP politics is quickly losing patience with President Trump,” Republican strategist Alex Conant told the New York Times. “The dysfunction is beyond strange — it’s dangerous.” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Trump: “He has an obligation to be president for all of us and stop the chaos. Most of the chaos is generated by him and no one else.”
Presidential historians must reach back to the 19th century to find examples of other leaders who’ve stirred such turmoil. Jeffrey A. Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, named John Tyler (1841-1845) and Andrew Johnson (1865-1869), both of whom were serving as vice president when their bosses died in office.
“In either case, we are forced to go back well over a century in the past to find an administration in such an open state of infighting coupled with legislative disarray,” Engel told the Times.
Of course, many of the problems come from the commander-in-chief himself. When Trump tweeted that he would bar transgender people from the military, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the policy would not change unless Trump issued a real order. American police chiefs, who should be natural allies of tough-on-crime Trump, condemned his suggestion that officers rough up suspects. The president even drew a rebuke from the Boy Scouts of America after taking the national jamboree hostage with a political rant rather than a paean to young scouts.
The never-ending political pratfalls might be entertaining on a movie screen or Broadway stage. But happening as they are on the national stage, at a time when the nation and the world are looking to Washington for leadership on issues ranging from health care to crumbling roads to violence at home and abroad, they provide evidence of a president who each month proves himself (is it possible?) even less fit to serve.
And that is a brand of chaos we can ill afford.