Some quick thoughts on that anonymous op-ed

So everybody is abuzz about the anonymous op-ed that appeared the other day in the New York Times — as well as about the new book by Bob Woodward that runs pretty much along the same lines — which claims to reveal that there is a patriotic “resistance” to Donald Trump within the current presidential administration and which describes Mr. Trump as undisciplined, without character, intellectually and psychologically unfit for the presidency, mercurial, incurious, potentially unstable, without settled political convictions, almost compulsively dishonest, and so forth.

On one level, my reaction to the anonymous column is pretty much that of Senator Bob Corker (R-TN):  This is isn’t even news.  The description of Donald J. Trump given in Woodward’s book and by the controversial Times column is completely congruent with the judgment of Mr. Trump that I had formed long before he secured the Republican presidential nomination.  That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him.  It’s why I left the Republican Party on the night that he accepted its nomination at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Has the Trump administration done some good things, from my vantage point as a long-time serious political libertarian/conservative?  Yes, it has.  The most obvious area in which that is happening is in its judicial nominations, which it basically — and fortunately — outsourced to the Federalist Society.  Brett Kavanaugh is a very good nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States, but the good news for the federal judiciary certainly doesn’t stop with Judge Kavanaugh.

Some are attacking the author of the anonymous op-ed, calling him (or her) a dishonorable coward, demanding that she (or he) come out of the closet and resign.

I get it.  Such open insubordination within the executive branch is something that should ordinarily be utterly condemned.  But we are, arguably, living in a very extraordinary time.

However, let’s look at this in theoretical terms, abstracted from the particular case of Mr. Donald J. Trump.

What, exactly, is a high-ranking White House official to do, if it becomes apparent that a president is quite unfit for office and possibly a danger to the Republic?

Some have spoken of invoking the 25th Amendment and removing Mr. Trump from office.  The presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has suggested such a course, for instance.  And that would clearly be the thing to do if the case were clear-cut, if the president were, say, in a deep and seemingly irretrievable coma or had been huddled for days in fetal position in a corner of the Oval Office, jibbering and drooling incoherently.

But what about a less black-and-white situation?  What if it has become apparent to the president’s closest staff and associates that, while still outwardly functional, a president is subtly but increasingly alienated from reality, unstable, irrational, possibly dangerous?  (Think of the famous case of King George III, of England.)  Where is the line to be drawn between a genuinely patriotic act for the welfare of the nation and a possibly self-serving act by an ambitious vice president or by an ideologically-opposed cabinet or some other faction of partisans?  Would all Americans agree on such a removal?  Would not a real or figurative civil war be a very possible result?  Would many Americans not see the toppling of a president under such circumstances as an illegitimate anti-democratic coup?  Might it not actually be such?

And would it actually be the right and honorable thing to do for a high-ranking official, one who is sincerely trying to limit the damage that a dangerously incompetent or deranged president can inflict, to step down?  Might it not actually be a principled act to stay on, in the interests of the country, working surreptitiously to restrain a seemingly sane but actually insane chief executive?

Was the author of this anonymous column trying to distance himself or herself from Mr. Trump in an effort to limit eventual damage to a personal career?  Possibly.  That can’t be ruled out.

Was it wise, if the situation is really as the op-ed says it is, to have gone public?  Would it not have been preferable for this anonymous official to have kept silence, so that an unstable president wouldn’t become even more unhinged through paranoid anger?  Hasn’t the publication of this column drawn the president’s attention to the “resistance” and, thus, made it potentially less effective?  Maybe.

Just some quick thoughts.  As I say, we’re going through fascinating times, politically speaking.  And I haven’t even mentioned the grandstanding at the Kavanaugh hearings by Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker (D-NJ) and the deeply regrettable Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), both of whom are plainly campaigning for the presidency.