In The New York Times, David Brooks thinks the Trump Administration is improving:
Third, the White House is getting more professional. Imagine if Trump didn’t tweet. The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we’d see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.
It’s almost as if there are two White Houses. There’s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss.
To my eye, that first sentence is completely disconnected from the rest of those two paragraphs. Imagine if Trump didn’t tweet. Why? Trump’s Tweets are now an officially sanctioned line of communication, and so a suggestion that we just ignore them is to only look at the part of the Administration that does what you desire, without acknowledging everything else. This is not high journalism, it’s low-brow selective vision.
And Joe Scarborough in WaPo is not in the least happy with Brooks’ comments:
Brooks’s column was met with effusive praise across the Never Trump community, even as the moderate Republican suggested a sort of detente in return for the favorable conservative policies being produced by the Trump White House. The columnist approvingly cited reports that behind the scenes Trump is a well-informed and affable leader who knows how to run a good meeting. Brooks even makes the breathtaking claim that “the White House is getting more professional.”
I find myself at a rare loss for words. Let’s simply review Trump’s actions over the three days since Brooks’s column was published.
The president once again advocated making it easier for politicians like him to sue columnists such as Brooks. Such a move would do immeasurable harm to our First Amendment free-speech guarantees.
Trump also pressured Republicans to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation and politicize the rule of law. This autocratic partisan plea to subvert Robert S. Mueller III’s work comes after the former FBI director has already secured convictions of Trump’s national security adviser and a top foreign policy expert, along with indictments of his former campaign manager and another key campaign operative.
If you only look at the good trees, you’re not going to see the diseased trees that signal ongoing disaster. But let me use language that any good conservative should recognize:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. [Benjamin Franklin]
Or, for those of Brooks’ ilk, the aphorism might go:
Those who would give up a little honor for a few goals will have, nor deserve, either.
