I promised the day after Donald Trump was elected, I would write words of praise if he ever does anything good.
Well, surprise surprise, two good things:
One
President Trump signed a paper exiling the crackpot isolationist ideologue Stephen Bannon from his seat on a committee of the National Security Council. It was a good thing to do. Thank you, Mr. President.
For more than a year, Bannon has been Trump’s chief strategist and was often seen leaning toward the president, whispering words of advice in his ear, like some unkempt muse. There are shades in Bannon of that Russian monk, the equally unkempt Grigori Rasputin, whose behind-the-scenes machinations in the court of Czar Nicholas II helped bring about its fall in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Bannon is a former naval officer, radio host, investment banker for Goldman Sachs and executive chairman of Breitbart News. That outlet is infamous for its fake news, for its ludicrous conspiracy theories and for catering to extremist views that sometimes embrace racist, sexist and xenophobic themes.
Bannon had Trump’s ear from the very beginning, and it was his arrogant no-holds-barred attitude that dovetailed so well with Trump’s own blustering political-campaign style.
However, once the campaign ended and the real job began, it became apparent to Trump the job, like health-care reform, is a lot more complicated than he’d thought. The first efforts partly engineered by Bannon – travel bans from six Muslim countries, repeal-and-replace health-care reform and other inept attempts at legislative successes – ended in setbacks or outright defeats.
In the byzantine intrigues of White House power struggles, it now seems likely there was a lot of push-back against Bannon by other advisors, who decided the power-seeker was out of his league, if not out of his mind.
In his first weeks as President, Trump seems to have had no coherent national or international vision, weak to non-existent policy-making skills, a flickering attention span, a constant need to invent stories via impulsive tweeting behavior and a compulsive habit of blaming others (especially Obama) when something didn’t go his way.
Such a man, such a president, has become increasingly dependent upon the advice of others, but unfortunately he took his cues from clueless sycophants and hangers-on in the Trump entourage. His presidency, good or bad, will depend upon which advisors he most heeds.
Every good president has surrounded himself with quality advisors who understand how things work and how things don’t work. There are plenty of expert people – good, experienced public servants – willing to give advice, including former presidents. If Trump seeks good advice and sticks to it, he just might transition into a successful president. If he continues to listen to bad advice, like the nonsense dispensed by Bannon and his ilk, his presidency will almost certainly continue to sink.
Two
Even though at first, in typical knee-jerk fashion, Trump blamed Obama for the chemical-attack atrocity in Syria, he quickly did a turnabout. His impassioned speech against that atrocity hit all the right notes.
His approval of the rocket attack on that Syrian airport was justified. In another turnabout, this time Trump listened not to extremist isolationist Bannon but to level-headed military advisors.
Silence and inaction are both forms of complicity when crimes against humanity are committed by tyrants like Bashar al-Assad of Syria. For six years, that monster, who is as evil as ISIS, has been purposely slaughtering civilians. It’s time to swat back at the tyrant, to show him (and his Russian accomplices) the world finds their vicious attacks to be abhorrent under any circumstances.
Will the rocket attack change anything long-term? Maybe not. But it was necessary, and Trump deserves praise for ordering it done. At the very least, the strike will show tyrants their butchery of civilians will not be enabled through international silence or inaction. Tyrants’ glaring lack of conscience or human decency must not be tolerated.
The next step is for America and our allies to help set up a vast safe zone for civilians still fleeing the carnage in Syria.
In the past few months, Trump had become the petulant, immature Tweeter-in-Chief. In the past couple of weeks, there are signs of a new maturity. Will it last? Let’s hope so.
President Trump, quit tweeting, quit pointing fingers, quit acting like an overgrown spoiled brat. Replace the tantrums with some real presidential gravitas and listen to good advisors. Make decisions that will be good for all of us.
