November 26, 2019--Schmoozing At Camp David

The consensus is that the reason all Republican members of Congress are so willing to follow Trump to the edge of the cliff and perhaps over it is because he continues to hold onto the support of his base (perhaps as much as 90 percent of it) in spite of the daily drumbeat of scandals, any one of which would in the case of a "normal" president bring about his impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. 

And if they found the backbone to chide him he would remember their "disloyalty" and support one of their opponents when it comes to primary time. For these members of Congress, plain and simple, it's all about keeping their seats.

This does explain much of their craven behavior, but in many cases other, more profound forces are at work.

Unlike Barack Obama who hated this part of the job, Trump makes a conscious to invite congressmen to share the perks of his presidency.

He never fails to ask members to fly with him on Air Force One when he is going to a rally in their district. In Washington, he uses access to the Oval Office as an emolument (sorry) with (sorry) quid pro quo implications. He even invites them to the residential floors of the White House for meetings, one of the most private places of any presidency. He also never fails to invite a member or two to join him in (frequent) rounds of golf, including using Mar-a-Lago and one or more of the universe of Trump residences and golf courses as political catnip.

And it has recently been reported that he invites people he is courting for political favors (for example, their votes) to spend a weekend of schmoozing at Camp David, the holiest of holies of presidential hideaways.

Most members of Congress come from middle class lives and have never known anyone like Trump much less had so much access to the gilded presidential life style. 

One can almost see Lindsey Graham salivating as he hangs out with Trump on the second floor of the White House, catching glimpses of the Lincoln Bedroom, or flies around with the president after a round of golf at one of Trump's "international" courses. 

As is evident Graham has lost whatever independence he had during the McCain years and is now fully committed to responding to all of Trump whims no matter how outrageous or humiliating. 

More than anything else, Trump makes him and his colleagues feel important as a result of this political courtship.

For the sake of full discloser I need to confess my own experiences with the Clinton and, later, the Bush presidencies. There may be a few useful takeaways. 

During my Ford Foundation years I worked with senior members of the White House staff (including Clinton himself) on a joint venture designed to help low-income students graduate from high school and enter college. It eventually came to be known as the Gear Up Program.

As part of their efforts to get Ford behind what they were proposing, I was invited to a number of White House sponsored events, including some that were more social than professional. 

I need to admit that I felt more important than I in fact was when I participated in meetings in the Roosevelt Room, the East Room, and even the Cabinet Room. I ate in the White House Mess and was even allowed a peek at the Situation Room. 

More than anything else, I was thrilled to have had a few meetings in the Oval Office where I was encouraged to play with Buddy, Clinton's dog.

I never got to the Residence or Camp David but would have been thrilled to have been invited.

I share this not so much for gossip purposes but to suggest how powerful the presidency in all its aspects is. Not just because he is Commander in Chief but because of the aura, history, and accoutrements of the presidency itself and how easy it is to come under their sway.

As a parvenu, like me born and raised in the outer boroughs of New York City, not in Manhattan, Trump on a gut level understands how wielding this soft, cultural and psychological power can be and he is playing it with perverse brilliance.

October 17, 2017--Jack's Reading

Jack has returned to the diner. But he is careful to avoid coming when Betty is working.

"You've got me reading," he said, clearly feeling proud of himself. I decided to just listen.

"You mentioned it in one of your thingies," that's how he refers to my blog, "The book about Nixon and Kissinger. I forget the exact title." I restrained myself from supplying it.

"I'm sure you're not surprised that I'm a big Nixon fan. Not that I liked Watergate or some of his other capers. He's lucky they didn't put him in jail. But nobody's perfect." He chuckled.

"Look what he did with China and Russia and Vietnam. He got us out of that one." I resisted saying that Nixon escalated the war in Vietnam, kept it going for at least three too many years and during that time 22,000 American soldiers were killed not to mention hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Or, off course, that we lost.

"Until I read that book of yours I thought he did all this pretty much by himself. I totally forgot about Kissinger. Henry Kissinger, who was his Secretary of State." Again, I restrained myself from correcting him--during Nixon's first term Kissiner was National Security Advisor. It wasn't until Nixon's second term that he also became Secretary of State. Nixon and Kissinger hated Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. They managed to keep him out of the loop, not telling him what they were up to in Vietnam or for that matter China and the Soviet Union.

"From the book it seems they were close partners. They were crazy, I'll admit that, but they were brilliant and quite a team. Both were insecure, needy, a little paranoid [A little?], and very competitive with each other. Both wanted sole credit for all they accomplished. Kissinger sucked up to a whole lot of newspaper columnists and would leak to them what they were up to. Claiming that he was the lead partner. The brains of the operation. Turns out not to be true." 

Jack did get that right. "From the tapes of their conversations and from documents the author [Robert Dallek] turned up it's pretty clear that Nixon was the boss. At least until near the end when the world was collapsing on Nixon and he was drunk and raving most of the time."

He paused, trying to draw me in. I was still into just listening.

"I admit the book [Nixon and Kissinger: Partners In Power] made me thing about my boy Trump." I couldn't wait to hear this. "It looks to me he could use a secretary like Kissinger. This Tilletson guy [Tillerson] is no Kissinger. In fact, I want to check his claim that he was the CEO of Exxon. He feels like a zero. How did he ever get that job? Assuming he's not lying about it. I know, he really was with Exxon. There's no way he could lie about that. But, boy, what a moron. I know, that's funny since he called Trump a moron, actually, a 'friggin moron.' I love the idea that Trump wanted to compare IQs. I'll give you that Trump isn't a Mensa candidate, but Tilletson's the moron, if you ask me. And I know," he smiled, "that you didn't. I mean ask me."

I had no idea where Jack was going with this monologue. I would have thought that since he's so enamored with Trump that he believes he can do anything on his own, including relating to the rest of the world. Or intentionally not relating to it. I would have thought Jack would hope that Trump would be his own Secretary of State. As Nixon was.

"Reading about what was possible to do about Vietnam, forget Russia and China for the moment, I realized that the situation was much more complicated than either bombing them back to the Stone Age or cutting and running. There were a lot more moving pieces, including that China and Russia separately--since even though they were both communists were rivals--were supporting and arming the Viet Cong. Nixon had to figure all that out. If he wanted to make a deal with China he had to figure out a way to either ignore the Chinese helping the North Koreans or make part of the deal that they would be sort of OK with what we were doing there. He knew it was all about self-interest and that the Chinese were probably all right with letting Nixon do his thing in Vietnam so not to screw up the possibility of a deal between us and them. Whew."

I continued to look at him, impressed that he had the outline right about what was going on. The complicated juggling that was required.

"And," Jack continued, "Nixon needed Kissinger to bounce ideas off and needed his hands-on help, including flying back and forth to have secret meetings with the Chinese and also the Russians since they had to be OK with us cozying up to Red China."

He took a deep breath, "And so my point after all this rambling is that even Trump, who is not as smart or knowledgeable as Nixon, I'll admit that, also needs someone other than Steve Bannon, who I assume he still talks with, and his daughter, whatever happened to her--as you said she and the son-in-law have pretty much disappeared--to try ideas out on. Tilletson's clearly not the one. So, to tell you truth [with him telling the truth can be a rarity], I'm a little worried. I don't want to get in a shit fight with Kim-whatever-his-name-is without thinking out all the options and complications."

I smiled. "I did notice," Jack said," that the other day Trump had Kissinger in to the White House to I assume talk some of this over. Kissinger scrunched in a chair in the Oval Office looked like he's 115 years old and has shrunk to four-feet tall. But I assume his big brain is still working. Maybe Trump got some good ideas from him."

If only that were true, I thought.

"One more thing and then I have to run. I wrote it down from the book. It scared me I admit. It comes from one of Nixon's Oval Office tapes. Students were protesting the war and Nixon was trying to coopt them by occasionally meeting with some of the leaders."

Jack pulled a paper out of his fleece pocket. "It's about one of these meetings."

Jack cleared his throat and read--"The meeting left him with a sense of hopelessness about changing minds. 'It's just crap, you know,' he told [his chief of staff] H.R. Haldeman. 'We have to sit and talk to these little jackasses . . . Why don't I just . . . scratch all this crap, really bullshit, all these meetings, this therapy meeting with the little assholes . . . and recognize that we have a crisis in the country in terms of understanding, recognizing that nobody can solve it.'"

"Incredible," I finally said. "I remember reading that and was shocked that . . ."

"That a president could talk this way in the Oval Office? And think this way? Again, he was brilliant, but as I said, also crazy. This is all very scary." He paused.

"Scary?"

"Yeah because who knows how they're talking these days in the White House." This was hard for Jack. "Probably the same way. And how they're thinking," He sighed. "Also probably the same."

Nixon and Haldeman