A Constitutional Crisis: A Superpower Run by a Lying Simpleton

While Democrats have taken the lead in the resistance to the misrule of the Trump/Pence regime as Congressional Republicans have become co-conspirators with regime efforts to subvert the rule of law, a small cadre of former Republicans continue to raise their voices denouncing the crisis the country faces because of the foul occupant of the White House.  In a piece in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson, a former Bush White House official, laments the idiocy of Der Trumpenführer, while David Frum, a one time Republican stalwart, looks at the constitutional the growing crisis in a piece in The Atlantic.  First, excerpts from Gerson's column:

One of the major problems with President Trump’s impulsivity is its utter predictability.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times by an anonymous administration official accused the president of impetuous, reckless rants, and Trump responded with impetuous, reckless rants (“TREASON?”). Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear” recounts a private “nervous breakdown” in the administration and Trump responded with a public nervous breakdown — accusing Woodward of being a “Dem operative” and raising a possible change in the libel laws. Amid this crisis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his “unwavering faith in President Trump,” and the president reacted just as the North Korean leader surely knew he would — touting the positive opinion of a homicidal despot on Twitter as a character reference.

[Trump’s] form of deception is qualitatively different from the deviousness of Richard M. Nixon or the smoothness of Bill Clinton. Trump pursues no deep or subtle strategies. He does not even consistently seek his own interests. He responds like a child or a narcissist — but I repeat myself — to positive or negative stimulation. It is the reason a discussion on “Fox & Friends” can so often set the agenda of the president. It is the reason that Trump’s lawyers, in the end, can’t allow him to be interviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. It would be like a 9-year-old defending a PhD dissertation. Or maybe a rabbit jumping into a buzz saw.

Here is the increasingly evident reality of the Trump era: We are a superpower run by a simpleton. From a foreign policy perspective, this is far worse than being run by a skilled liar. It is an invitation to manipulation and contempt.

What we are finding from books, from insider leaks and from investigative journalism is that the rational actors who are closest to [Trump] the president are frightened by his chaotic leadership style. They describe a total lack of intellectual curiosity, mental discipline and impulse control.

The testimony of the tell-alls is remarkably consistent. Some around Trump are completely corrupted by the access to power. But others — who might have served in any Republican administration — spend much of their time preventing [Trump] the president from doing stupid and dangerous things.

Frum's piece is no kinder to the foul excuse for a human being occupying the White House as these excerpts show:

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:

Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.  I would know. I am one of them.

The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.
But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.

And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this article. They will be worse because of this article.

The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. . . . .What would be better?

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.

Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, antidemocratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

Be very very afraid.  Slowly but steadily we are witnessing a worsening situation.  Now it is easy to understand why at times the Praetorian Guard during the Roman Empire took it upon itself to remove the emperor.  At some point, they no doubt thought that the good of the nation must come first.