The agony of Donald Trump — well, one of the many agonies — is that there are times when he will actually do the right thing, or at least a defensible thing, and we’ll be left wondering, even more than we did with other presidents, about what his motivations were, whether they fit into any truly considered plan or whether his actions amount to the newest episode of a continuing reality show.
Such is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for the pose he needs in the narrative du jour.
There’s justification for it, absolutely. President Obama had advisers who wished he’d done something similar, and there were Democrats aplenty — Hillary Clinton apparently among them — who found his restraint when it came to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be infuriating, a surrender of America’s role and moral authority in the world.
But Trump’s military action makes little sense in the context of most of what he said in the years before he was elected and much of what he has done as president so far. Let me get this straight: Obama wasn’t supposed to draw or be drawn across a red line, not even when the Assad regime used chemical weapons, but when the regime did that on Trump’s watch, it crossed “many, many lines,” in his words, and compelled an American response?
That’s a “dizzying turnabout,” as Blake Hounshell wrote in Politico, under the headline “Trump’s Syria Whiplash.”
And I can’t square Trump’s statements over the last two days that the United States can’t stand by idly in the face of such grotesque suffering with his determination to bar those who suffer from being accepted as refugees into America.
The babies prompt outrage and heartache when they’re writhing in Syria, but God forbid they come here.
And so two questions, loud and urgent: Why did he do this now? And, beyond that, who exactly is he?
The readiest answers unsettle me. It’s impossible to ignore the degree to which the military strike pushes a slew of unflattering stories about the Trump administration — its failed attempt to undo Obamacare, the feuding within its ranks and, above all, the probes into possible collusion between Trump’s associates and the Russian government — to the side of the page. Nothing drowns out scandal like the fire and fury of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The notion that military action salvages a president on the defensive, boldly underscoring his role as commander in chief, is nothing new. But there’s a fresh wrinkle in this case, because those bombs put Trump at particular odds with Russia at a moment when there’s enormous advantage in that.
Listen to the television commentators right now. Read the news. It focuses on present and looming tensions with Vladimir Putin, not the Putin-Trump kissy-face that’s been so appalling and fascinating to watch. It’s a whole new story. What’s more, the quickness with which those missiles followed the Assad regime’s latest atrocity cast Trump in an emphatically decisive light. It’s precisely the look that he needs right now.
On Friday morning Mike Allen of Axios quoted an unnamed official in the Trump administration saying that White House aides were viewing this particular juncture — these last few days — as “leadership week,” because Trump was not only meeting with the Chinese president at Mar-a-Lago but had also stood tall at a lectern there on Thursday night, just after the strike against Syria, to utter these sweeping words: “God bless America and the entire world.”
To read Allen’s succinct account is to get the haunting sense that the administration isn’t talking about — or, for that matter, evaluating — the substance of what Trump did in Syria. The official is talking about a script that Trump is reading and a role that he’s playing. I fear that Trump is relishing that role too much, and that his enjoyment explains the turnabout. How shocking, really, was Assad’s use of chemical weapons against its citizens? He’s done it before. What’s changed is that Trump, not Obama, is now the one in position to send America’s missiles, flex America’s muscle and feel the titanic power of that.
That brings me back to the second of the two questions I asked earlier: Who is this president? Is he guided by any fixed philosophies or is he moved by moods and operating on whim? This, too, isn’t a concern singular to Trump’s presidency, but it’s a concern that’s amplified in Trump’s presidency, because his background is so unusual: no government experience, no military service, a hodgepodge of political positions and associations over time. On top of which, his performance on the campaign trail, in debates and in the White House has made clear, time and again, how woefully uninformed he can be and how blissfully untroubled by that he is.
A positive interpretation of these latest developments is that Trump is someone who’s willing to adjust to a deeper, fresher understanding of events, to pivot in accordance with circumstances, to learn and to evolve. Consistency can definitely be overrated. At times it’s just a euphemism for stubbornness.
But another take is that Trump isn’t just uninformed but unformed. And that’s not reassuring at all. As the week went on, there were more and more reports not just of tension in the White House between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner but of extreme acrimony and outright warfare. The intensity of that collision reflects competing ideologies and sensibilities, yes, but it also speaks to the stakes.
The winner’s spoils aren’t merely influence over Trump, who, according to a report in The Times on Friday morning, tilts “one way or the other depending on the day, or even the hour.” The spoils, it seems, are the opportunity to mold him utterly, because nearly 80 days into his administration, he remains a wet piece of clay.
<
FRANK BRUNI>
댓글 안에 당신의 성숙함도 담아 주세요.
'오늘의 한마디'는 기사에 대하여 자신의 생각을 말하고 남의 생각을 들으며 서로 다양한 의견을 나누는 공간입니다. 그러나 간혹 불건전한 내용을 올리시는 분들이 계셔서 건전한 인터넷문화 정착을 위해 아래와 같은 운영원칙을 적용합니다.
자체 모니터링을 통해 아래에 해당하는 내용이 포함된 댓글이 발견되면 예고없이 삭제 조치를 하겠습니다.
불건전한 댓글을 올리거나, 이름에 비속어 및 상대방의 불쾌감을 주는 단어를 사용, 유명인 또는 특정 일반인을 사칭하는 경우 이용에 대한 차단 제재를 받을 수 있습니다. 차단될 경우, 일주일간 댓글을 달수 없게 됩니다.
명예훼손, 개인정보 유출, 욕설 등 법률에 위반되는 댓글은 관계 법령에 의거 민형사상 처벌을 받을 수 있으니 이용에 주의를 부탁드립니다.
Close
x