The anonymous NYT op-ed - initial thoughts

I haven't gone wonky enough to try to quantitatively compare leak-based assessments of the climate in this White House to past ones. All administrations come in for palace-intrigue tell-alls. Certainly, Bob Woodward has made that his stock in trade since the mid-1970s, and his latest appears to be in line with the way he's approached previous administrations. Omarosa Manigault Newman's tome is different in tone, which is understandable given her history with the Very Stable Genius. There are compelling reasons to cast doubt on her credibility.

Still, there have been a number of such books and articles, and roiling chaos seems to be the common theme.

There's the very public and indisputable way people get fired, for one thing. I'll bet that Rex Tillerson has to work concertedly at not letting seething bitterness overtake his basic life outlook.

But now comes this unsigned column in the New York Times. I haven't checked around yet, but I'll bet the takes among both the hard left and the shills and throne-sniffers of Trump-world are so predictable that the same phrases will recur in the various responses within each camp. "This is what we get for letting this maniac steal the election" from the hard left, and "the deep-state long knives are out for this great leader" from the Trumpists.

But I just read the piece, and it speaks for me - and I've certainly never worked in this administration

The author sounds like a principled three-pillar conservative to me, one who has the maturity and evenness of mind to applaud the good moves of this era and simultaneously see that something is very wrong:

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

Doesn't this sound just like how you've envisioned cabinet / staff meetings unfolding?

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier. 

I am heartened to be reassured of this:

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t. 

The policy area that the author chooses as his or her example of how this plays out is foreign policy, which leads me to believe he or she works in some kind of national-security capacity, but that may not be the case.

Okay, I will now start making the rounds and seeing how the different camps are reacting to this.

I'll make a prediction of the low-hanging-fruit variety. The shills are going to be mad that someone could be so "traitorous and cowardly" as to do this. The left will cherry-pick phrases they want to drill into the public mind in this final runup to the midterm elections.

And those of us who want to see conservative principles drive American politics, government, and civic life generally are going to say, "That's exactly how I thought it was."