THE BIGGEST THREAT

THE BIGGEST THREAT

Maybe the biggest threat to democracy in America is not Donald Trump.

In the space of the last month, the country has seen his former lawyer plead guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and orchestrating illegal donations to his 2016 campaign at his behest in order to cover up his affairs with a porn star and a Playmate. His erstwhile campaign manager has been found guilty of tax evasion arising out of work for Ukraine's former leader, and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovitch.  His White House turns out to have been deemed "crazytown" -- and he,  an "idiot" --  by his own chief of staff. And, according to "Anonymous", there is -- and has been since day one -- some undefined group in the White House and executive branch preserving "our democratic institutions while thwarting [the President's] more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

The common thread here is Donald Trump's narcissism, dishonesty and paranoia.

But there's another, perhaps more important, common thread.

For, in each of the above examples, someone -- other than Trump --  is either getting ahead . . .

Or burying their head.

Start with Cohen and Manafort, the lawyer and operative, respectively.

Cohen became rich taking bullets for Donald Trump.  When approached by attorneys for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, he could have done nothing.  Their tales would presumably have then seen the light of day and either would have been sufficient to kill Trump's presidential campaign or ignored by a loyal cadre that had already priced in and devalued Trump's degradations.  Instead of doing nothing, however, Cohen channeled six figure pay-offs for silence, with Trump's knowledge and assistance and in violation of federal law.  His probable expectation was that Trump would never be elected anyway (even Trump thought so) and the payments would never become public. Meanwhile, his image as Trump's protector would be burnished, and with it, his opulent life style.

Manafort became rich shilling for crypto-fascists.  That is what Yanukovitch, his political acolytes and his supporters in Russia (including a number of oligarchs) were and are.  When the Euromaidan Revolution ousted him in 2014, Manaforte's balance sheet took a beating.  For not only had he shilled for them, he was also in debt to them . . .

To the tune  of  $17 million to the oligarchs.

Over the years, this creates a lot of turmoil, especially when the gravy train goes dry.

So Manafort had to cope

To do so he (i) evaded taxes, (ii) committed bank fraud on loan applications to generate cash, and (iii) volunteered his services for free as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

This third tack was not motivated by generosity. 

Instead, Manafort thought he could later monetize the campaign job by advising Yanukovitch's Eurasian protector and Trump's "new best friend", Vladimir Putin.  No doubt Manafort also did not expect Trump to win or his finances to attract the attention of the Justice Department. 

Cohen and Manafort were trying to get ahead.

John Kelly and Anonymous, however, are burying theirs.

To begin, the notion that an American President actually requires a secret cabal of "adults in the room" in order simply to save the republic from its Commander in Chief is . . .

Scary.

This is not the 19th century.  Or even the early 20th. It's true that we have had bad presidents before, even very bad ones.  But they never had nukes or twitter and they could not cause a holocaust in minutes.  James Buchanan argued himself into paralysis and watched as the nation undid itself into a Civil War.  James Polk sent the Army to Texas to start a war with Mexico.  Warren Harding's brief administration was so riddled with incompetence and corruption that two went to jail, one committed suicide, and another -- his Attorney General -- resigned in disgrace.  And with Woodrow Wilson, the lights were on but no one was home following his stroke, and his wife became -- more or less -- the acting President.

These events, however, occurred over months, in some cases even years.  There was time to prepare and adapt.

And time to get our minds around some of the disasters that ensued.

Now is different. 

The country can afford an idiot president.  It can afford a lazy one.  It can even afford a self-absorbed Fox News addict who treats every day as a reality-TV episode where he has to win and Fox assures him he has.

What it cannot afford, however, is a lazy, narcissistic idiot who acts on his neuroses.

Which is what we now have.

Kelly and Anonymous tell us they are the "adults in the room".  They ostensibly are shielding the country from Trump's worst instincts.  They steal paper off his desk (Gary Cohn, erstwhile chief economic adviser, avoiding rupture of our trade agreement with South Korea),  or refuse to follow orders (General Mattis at the Defense Department, refusing to assassinate Assad), or slow walk demanded changes (Mattis again, this time delaying any ban on transgender troops), or do end-arounds that establish policy before the President can undermine or kill it (which is what National Security Adviser John Bolton accomplished by getting the recent NATO communique written and agreed to before Trump even showed up for the meeting).

The argument for remaining anonymous (or, in Kelly's case, now denying he said what Bob Woodward says he said) is that these people need to be on the inside, working their subterfuge in the interests of preserving the republic before our nutcase-in-chief kicks them out and installs a team of only true believers and complete enablers.  In other words, they're not just protecting us from Trump.  They're protecting us from . . .

Steve Bannon . . .

Or Corey Lewandowski . . .

Or Stephen Miller.

So far so good.

But what disaster awaits if they fail?

We came close to finding out earlier this year.  According to Woodward, Trump planned to tweet that the US was going to pull its dependents out of South Korea.  The Pentagon went into overdrive. It had reliable information, again according to Woodward,  that North Korea would have read that tweet as an announcement that war was imminent and would have taken preemptive action. Fortunately for us, the Pentagon was able to stop the tweet.

But what if the tweet had been sent from Trump's bedroom, the "devil's workshop" according to former chief of staff Reince Priebus, or at 5 am  or on a Sunday evening, Trump's "witching hours", as Priebus also has proclaimed?  

Would anyone have been there to stop it?

The problem here is not that Trump is a megalomaniac or dim, though he appears to be both.

The problem is that he is impetuous . . .

With not an ounce of self-doubt.

And Anonymous and the other "adults in the room" cannot save us from that.

In the Bush II Administration, the war on terror was governed by Dick Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine".  Under it, a 1% chance of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack against us was to be met with a full on response.  The theory was that the infinitesimal likelihood of the occurrence was overcome by the catastrophic nature of the consequences were the remote event actually to occur. 

Maybe we're now in a "One Percent Presidency".

Because, while Buchanan never had nukes . . .

Trump does.

And, even more importantly, so do our adveraries.

What should be done?

Here's my view.

The adults should resign.  

En masse.  

Following that, Republicans in Congress -- the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader, and all the committee chairs -- should go to Trump with a list of acceptable replacements, some of whom could even be the resigned adults themselves, and one big ultimatum -- if Trump does not agree to the replacements and to stop tweeting, they will impeach him.  If enough of the anonymous adults also happen to be in the Cabinet, the GOP could even threaten Trump with a call for his ouster under the 25th Amendment.

Will this be done?

Not a chance.

Why?

Because Anonymous and his or her confreres are not just protecting the country.  

They are protecting themselves. 

These so-called "adults in the room" are all GOP appointees and operatives. They presumably want jobs, and therefore a preserved Republican Party, long after Trump is gone. And as for GOP members of Congress, they long ago put their courage in a blind trust in exchange for tax cuts, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.  Public denials from the press podium and spin aside, everyone knows the danger inherent in this President and this Presidency.  It's the one opinion now held in Washington, D.C. on a completely bi-partisan basis.

The "adults" know it too.

And they want to be forgiven -- indeed, praised as our saviors -- once the age of Trump passes.

Let's pray we get there.

If we don't, the biggest threat to democracy will not have been Donald Trump.

It will have been . . .

Careerism.