The Steady Bedlam of the Trump White House

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/opinion/trump-mattis-turnover.html

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What are we to make of all this turnover in the Trump White House?

Clearly, James Mattis’ departure is gravely concerning — he was the last grown-up, and while not much is known about acting secretary designee Patrick Shanahan, his experience in military technology isn’t likely to calm jitters in world capitals about whether Mr. Mattis’ successor can check the president’s impetuous behavior.

Other departures are less obviously chilling. In a normal administration, a president hiring his third chief of staff in under two years would launch a flotilla of news stories speculating about that president’s stability and willingness to submit to a certain degree of order. But we have a president who gleefully flaunts his instability and thirst for disorder every day, so these stories are very old news.

Before we start drawing conclusions, let’s first survey the facts. It is indeed the case that turnover in Donald Trump’s administration is greater than in recent past ones — in some cases, far greater. On Dec. 17, Brookings Institution scholars Elaine Kamarck, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Nicholas W. Zeppos released a report called “Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration.” The study analyzes turnover among what the authors call the president’s “A Team” — the few dozen most influential positions within the executive office of the president — and among Cabinet members.

Among the 65 Trump A Team members, they find, 42 positions have turned over, for a rate of 65 percent. Seventeen of these vacancies occurred because the person was promoted, 14 because the person “resigned under pressure” and 11 because the person simply resigned.

The 14 are, of course, the most interesting for our purposes, with their departures labeled in the report by the slightly ominous acronym “RUP.” Some of the better-known ones: Sean Spicer, the little-mourned (except by reporters who now have to deal with Sarah Huckabee Sanders) first press secretary; Reince Priebus, the first chief of staff; the alt-rightist Steve Bannon; and the tell-all memoirist Omarosa Manigault.

The 65 percent turnover rate for the first two years is considerably higher overall than that of Mr. Trump’s five immediate predecessors. In Barack Obama’s first two years, his A Team turnover rate was 24 percent (Mr. No Drama!). George W. Bush’s rate was 33 percent. Bill Clinton’s was 38 percent. George H.W. Bush’s was 25 percent. And Ronald Reagan’s was 57 percent, his year-two turnover rate being actually just a bit higher than Mr. Trump’s.

With respect to the second category of appointees tracked in the Brookings study, Cabinet officials, here again Mr. Trump had the most departures. He lost 12 Cabinet secretaries in his first two years, according to the study (released before Mr. Mattis made 13). Mr. Obama lost four, Mr. Clinton six, and Mr. Bush the younger just one. Of the 12, eight were RUPs, and many of them left in quite dramatic fashion: Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who leased a townhouse from a lobbyist for around one-third the going market rate, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was on the receiving end of torrents of presidential Twitter abuse until he finally said “enough.”

These numbers, while interesting, are not especially surprising to anyone who follows the news. The Trump administration is, to employ a seasonal metaphor, an island of misfit toys. And it’s presided over by a mercurial and minatory chief executive who can’t be easy to work for on a number of levels. (He doesn’t listen to people, he might turn on you in a flash, etc.)

Add to all that the fact of the Robert Mueller investigation, which veritably ensures that anyone who accepts a White House position today will spend years paying for the pleasure. First, literally, as any Trump White House aide is bound to need to lawyer up and eventually pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills. And second, reputationally; that parachute on which officials of administrations from both parties typically float off to lush corporate sinecures is, in this administration, made not of gold but of lead.

But there’s an even more sobering angle to the Mueller part of this story, for the potential Trump staffer who can think ahead. Anyone who goes to work in that White House should assume that he or she will witness acts that are, shall we say, irregular at best. If it were me, I’d assume that fate would one day place me in the position of either having to tell prosecutors some very gruesome truths about what I saw or not telling them and risking jail time. Who wants that?

In any event, there seems almost no chance that this administration will stabilize. If we extrapolate the Brookings numbers out, Mr. Trump is on track to have a four-year turnover rate of greater than 100 percent — that is, to have all 65 A Team positions change hands at least once.

Yes, that’s troubling, certainly in the case of Secretary Mattis. In other instances, though, let’s face it — the staff hardly matters. Mr. Trump is more influenced by whoever is on “Fox & Friends” on any given morning than who’s in the office down the hall. That’s a kind of steadiness, I suppose. But it’s steady bedlam, and it’s just getting worse.

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