At about 5:00 PM on April 12, 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt died. Anyone close to Roosevelt could not have been shocked by the news. In fact, looking at photos of FDR during the last year of his life, including famous images of him with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, one marvels at the collective delusion exhibited toward Roosevelt’s inevitable mortality; the man had simply not been at all well.
Yet and still, on the fateful day he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage it seems none was more surprised than the man who would succeed him. As all who mattered rushed to the White House to oversee the empowerment of a new POTUS, Truman sat “looking dreadful…. absolutely dazed,” according to biographical accounts. Taking the oath, Truman would later ruminate, he felt the “moon, the stars, and all the planets” had just fallen on his shoulders. Regardless how much previous thought Truman had given to FDR’s demise, it’s clear when the time came he was, at least for a while, a deer in the headlights. And why not? America hadn’t had another President in more than a decade, and the world was at war, a conflict yet to be fully decided by any stretch.
Fortunately, there were good men available to advise Truman and help develop a White House decision making process. Truman, was as well read as any President ever to serve, but he knew what he didn’t know, particularly after being near fully shut out by FDR from inner circle war planning. Luckily there was Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, who Truman recognized for the great statesman he was, and whose advice the new President was not shy to seek and consider.
Later, Truman would appoint Marshall Secretary of State, where he would be responsible for the Marshall Plan, one of the great US foreign policy achievements. Early on, however, it was merely the understanding Marshall and other able advisors were available for counsel that afforded Truman the critical confidence and well being to take on the plethora of momentous challenges he immediately faced. One can only shutter at how different history may have been if Truman had not been up to the task he suddenly inherited, if he had been too insecure and arrogant to cultivate wisdom from the braintrust available to him.
It’s a certainty Donald Trump was at least as startled when he became President as Truman was in the spring of 45’. By all accounts, nobody within the leadership of the Trump campaign, least of all the candidate himself, expected to prevail three years ago. As Election Day neared, Trump rallies were more him hissing about a “rigged system” that would ensure his defeat than any plans for a presidency. Indeed, to hear Trump “campaign” in Decision 2016’s homestretch was to absorb all of the whiney conspiratorial grievance and resentment MAGA had represented from day one. The feeling was it would simply continue as a central part of Fox/AM’s post-election sedition. Nothing is more ironic within the ever expanding slew of Trump outrages than the projection to those considering his overt corruption the “sour grapes” diatribes he was honing to a fine edge before snow fell in hell and he won.
There is a great picture of the Trump inner circle looking at television monitors as the impossible was playing out. While all look flabbergasted at what’s unfolding, the winner looks horrified, crestfallen at the cruel karma his hubris had created. Suffice it to say, Truman could not have looked more “dreadful” than our President-elect felt at that moment. Unfortunately for all of us, Trump never enjoyed access to the nation’s best and brightest, and moving into the final year of his term, it couldn’t be clearer this President only feels threatened and aggravated by counsel he makes no effort at all to digest.
All of which brings us to the last man standing in the West Wing with any sort of relationship at all to the purgatory between Trump’s unhinged impulses and the levers of government responsible for somehow translating them to practical policy. Saying Mick Mulvaney is no George Marshall is like saying Boone’s Farm Apple isn’t a Chateau Lafite Rothschild; Marshall would have thought twice about entrusting Mulvaney his sandwich order, but here we are. It’s comical to hear MAGA minions in Congress claim the President is focused on his policy agenda. Anybody with eyes and a twitter feed knows this is nonsense and looming impeachment completely obsesses Trump. To that end, Mulvaney is mobilizing his troops to go to war against House investigators, refusing any and all requests for cooperation.
Mulvaney’s impact on DC bureaucracy is as vast as any in the White House. After all, he currently holds three jobs. In addition to chief-of-staff, Mulvaney also still heads Office of Management and Budget, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all of his concerted efforts to fully destroy the latter notwithstanding. Word now is that Mulvaney loyalists at OMB like Russell Vought will stonewall Democrats as they piece together the mechanics of placing a hold on near a half billion dollars of military aid previously authorized for Ukraine.
Of course, Mulvaney, himself, admitted publicly during a news conference the aid had been held as a lever to pressure the Zelensky government to follow Trump wishes. Mulvaney declared without hesitation such actions were near routine, nothing at all worth a second thought. “Get over it” was the advise he had for reporters at the time. The contortions he subsequently went through to walk his prattle back, amid rumors he had sealed his fate on the way to becoming a former Trump lackey, confirmed chaos in the West Wing about which narrative to follow. Nothing new there.
What is new and increasingly ominous is the incredible idea that Trump may actually shut down the government later this month as part of his continuing tantrum against impeachment. Nobody believes for a second, the President came up with that one by his lonesome…. all roads point to Mulvaney. What better way to get back in Trump’s good graces than come up with out-of-the-box scorched-earth militancy? There is a reason Mulvaney is reviled by most who regret having to share his company; this idea illustrates why. It is at once as servile and gratuitously nasty as imaginable. What’s next? We’ll give San Francisco a little taste of a tactical nuke if Shifty doesn’t back off?
The battle lines in the White House are clearly drawn, the litmus test for loyalty unmistakable: you either cooperate with investigators or you tell them to get bent. As for shutting down the government, that’s always been in Mulvaney’s wheelhouse. As a Freedom Caucus backbencher, then Congressman Mulvaney was perhaps the most reliable yea on the Hill when it came to budgetary gridlock. Now he can furlough government workers just in time for the holidays as a foolproof way of insuring his own job security. What would George Marshall have said?! ….. “Son, are you sure you’re up to this? Last time you got me pastrami instead of corned beef. Maybe you better write it down.” Another ugly tint of ruin! BC