Tom Ricks is disappointed in General H. R. McMaster. On May 15, during Donald Trump’s hebdomas horribilis, McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, appeared briefly outside the White House to attack a story in the Washington Post. The Post piece alleged that the president had revealed classified information to Russian diplomats during a meeting in the Oval Office. McMaster said the Post story was “false.” The next day, in a more formal press briefing, he amended this claim, saying that “the premise of that article was false.” And he then went through a series of maneuvers which might charitably be described as non-denial denials.
All of this prompted Ricks to write a short piece about McMaster for Foreign Policy. Ricks has known McMaster for twenty years, since McMaster was a major. Ricks respects him a great deal. Which is probably what caused him to write that “my guess is that when McMaster was trotted out before the cameras last night, he gave up a little piece of his soul.” A good deal of the non-Trump world seemed to agree: General McMaster was on the way to becoming exhibit No. 537 in how Trumpism corrupts.
But there is an alternate reading of events in which McMaster’s tortured defense of President Trump isn’t a disappointment at all—in which it might well be heroic.
Let’s stipulate that in a normal administration—if the president were Bush or Reagan or Gore or Clinton or, God help us, John Kasich—it would be bad for McMaster to humiliate himself the way he did. We’d expect a man of principle and character to refuse such an errand and, if necessary, resign rather than carry it out.
But this is not a normal administration. President Trump is being scrutinized by a special prosecutor 120 days into his term. He seems to set his agenda by watching cable news. (Recall his March tweet-storm about Guantánamo Bay composed while watching Fox & Friends.) He has, by his own admission, no grasp of public policy. (“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”) Twenty-four hours after being sworn into office, he sent his press secretary out to insist that more people had attended his inauguration than had attended Barack Obama’s. (“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period,” proclaimed Trump’s press secretary, in ludicrous contradiction of all evidence.)
President Trump browbeats allies (remember his heated conversation with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull) while sharing classified information with strategic competitors (as he did in the meeting with the Russians), all while sowing confusion about America’s strategic commitments (see his on-again, off-again views of NATO). And his two closest advisers are his daughter and her husband.
Put aside politics and ideology, conservatism and liberalism and nationalism. None of that is what makes Trump’s administration extraordinary. If Newt Gingrich were president and pursuing the exact same policy agenda, it would be an invigorating experience. Depending on your politics, it might be exhilarating or maddening, but it would not be terrifying. Donald Trump is no Newt Gingrich.
Which leads us back to McMaster. General H. R. McMaster is one of the handful of grownups in a position of authority in Trump’s administration. What would you have him do? Resign? McMaster is one of the last lines of defense within the administration in the event that the president decides to do something catastrophically unwise.
And even if you don’t believe McMaster would stand up to President Trump in such a situation, he’s doing an enormous service just sitting in his chair at the National Security Council. If he were to resign, his replacement could be another opportunistic Russophile like Mike Flynn. Or worse.
It’s precisely because Donald Trump is what he is that McMaster was right to do what he did. America is almost certainly better off with McMaster running the NSC. If staying in that job means courting humiliation in an effort to keep Trump happy, then what McMaster did was self-sacrifice. He jumped on a grenade, at some cost to his reputation, in order to serve the country.
A year ago in these pages (“Thinking the Unthinkable,” May 9, 2016), James W. Ceaser and Oliver Ward argued that should Trump become president, it would be invaluable to have good people working for him even—especially—if you opposed his administration:
The same logic suggests that even those most appalled by the president should appreciate, not castigate, Gen. McMaster. Instead of piling on, we all ought to honor his sacrifice.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
Correction: The article originally stated that Tom Ricks had known McMaster for 10 years, since he was the colonel in charge of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq. He has actually known McMaster for 20 years since he was a major.
