Satire, commentary, analysis—throw it all out the window. What’s happening in Washington is beyond parody, beyond fiction. What will happen tomorrow, what will happen in the next hour? No one knows.
.. Trump doesn’t want stability, he wants motion. He isn’t interested in details or arguments, he’s energized by accomplishments, achievements, placards on the wall. He doesn’t have a cabinet, he has employees. And the primary job of those employees is to protect their boss.
.. Which is what Anthony Scaramucci understands. Like Trump, he’s a showman. Larger than life. He’s familiar with grand gestures. He’s not a D.C. guy.
.. So the man whom the voters brought in to disrupt Washington brought in Scaramucci to disrupt his own White House. Well, mission accomplished.
.. I have been reading past issues of National Review, including bound volumes from 1977-1981. I do not know whether Donald Trump fits the historian’s model of a “disjunctive” president like Jimmy Carter, but the two chief executives do share this in common: Both campaigned as outsiders, both brought fellow outsiders with them to Washington, and these coteries of trusted advisers did not mesh with the institutions and personalities and manners they found in the city. In both cases there was a culture clash, apparent from the beginning. It soon became apparent that Carter’s presidency was not only dysfunctional, but a failure.