The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg has published a thoughtful profile on former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But lamenting Mattis’ refusal to directly criticize President Trump, Goldberg misses the key point: America won’t rise or fall on the partisan rancor of the moment, or on Trump’s unpredictability, but rather on the endurance of its best values.
Goldberg fails to recognize that Mattis must put America’s long-term interests first. Mattis’ condemnation of Trump’s leadership would only stoke the partisan fires. It would win no moral battles. Such battles can only be won when those fires are denied fuel.
Goldberg loses this point in the smoke of his disgust for Trump.
And it’s odd that he does, because Goldberg doesn’t get complete silence from Mattis on Trump’s leadership. Asking the retired four-star Marine about Trump’s May 29 tweet thanking Kim Jong Un for insulting Joe Biden, Goldberg gets Mattis’ clear response: “Any Marine general or any other senior servant of the people of the United States would find that, to use a mild euphemism, counterproductive and beneath the dignity of the presidency.”
Mattis is right, of course, and his words carry a deeper condemnation of the president than at first apparent. But that’s not enough for Goldberg. Apparently, he wants a rant. “While discipline is an admirable quality,” Goldberg says, “in my conversations with Mattis I found it exasperating, because I believe that the American people should hear his answer to this question: Is Donald Trump fit for command? He should answer the question well before November 3, 2020. Mattis is in an unparalleled position to provide a definitive answer.”
No, Mattis should not join the partisan battle over Trump’s leadership. He is right to preserve the honor and apolitical credibility of the civilian-controlled military. Mattis knows that these institutions cannot sustain simply on formality and expectation; they require action and example.
The roots of this understanding are found in something Goldberg and Mattis discuss: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. There, the Roman emperor observed, “thou mayest observe that the life of a citizen is happy, who continues a course of action which is advantageous to his fellow-citizens, and is content with whatever the state may assign to him.”
Mattis rightly believes that his choice to preserve the honor of the military and of putting the nation before all else is advantageous to his fellow citizens. And as he was content to serve before, so too is he now content to endure criticism for his silence.
Goldberg misses this, asking, “Don’t you have a duty to warn the country if it is endangered by its leader?”
Mattis deflected. He knows the nation’s institutions guard against the imperfections of its leader. And again, he knows that his warning, if offered, would only enrage one side and excite the other. It would achieve no American victory.
As Marcus Aurelius references Plato, “For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness of deserting his post.”
For Mattis, it’s ultimately — and rightly — about duty.
