President Trump’s hotels and golf courses are big, as are his rallies and his rhetoric. Too often, though, his vision of the presidency is way too small.
The public impeachment hearings have highlighted this myopia.
The tales told by career foreign service officers brought in by impeachment Chairman Adam Schiff portray Trump as setting aside the national interest in favor of his own political interests.
William Taylor, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, testified before the House Intelligence Committee about a purported phone call between Trump and his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. “Following the call with President Trump,” Taylor testified, “the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.”
Ukraine is an ally at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is one of our great foes. This conflict is so serious to the U.S. that Congress and the Trump administration have provided weapons to Ukraine to fight Putin’s forces. This is considerably more than President Barack Obama was prepared to do. Ukraine is also rich in energy reserves, and potentially these reserves provide ways to counter the regional power of Russia and Iran.
Yet, if Taylor’s account is accurate, Trump’s main concern about Ukraine is whether anything happened there that could reflect poorly on Joe Biden. Taylor’s testimony is plausible because it is supported by the transcript of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump does not dispute the transcript but, rather, describes it as “perfect.” Trump can take a legitimate interest in investigations and Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election, but to spend a vast majority of the call speaking about them suggests a lopsided agenda.
Even if it isn’t corrupt, it is small thinking. The federal government isn’t a small business, and it’s certainly not Trump’s business. It belongs to the public, the board of directors is Congress, and he is the CEO. He does not sufficiently understand that he works for Congress and the public. When acting in his public capacity, he can’t think about himself or his own pet concerns.
We’re not saying Trump ought to hand the keys over to the bureaucracy. In fact, quite the opposite. When it comes to “draining the swamp” and reshaping Washington, the president is once again guilty of thinking too small.
Commentators and Democrats believe Trump’s great sin was that he fired Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Some of Taylor’s ill will toward Trump is explained by it. And some of the circumstances of the firing are worth examining; Ukrainian American hustler Lev Parnas donated heavily to pro-Trump super PACs, met with Trump at his hotels, and lobbied him to fire Yovanovitch on the grounds that she didn’t really like Trump. If this triggered the firing, it’s again small ball, but it’s also relevant that some half of all ambassadors are political appointees chosen specifically because the president needs to be able to impose his policies on an often resistant permanent bureaucracy. Yovanovitch was not in the category of diplomat who could have been expected to side with and help Trump. Presidents hire and fire ambassadors for any reason they wish.
Trump pledged to drain the swamp, but he never dedicated his attention to a comprehensive overhaul of the foreign service and the State Department. You don’t need to posit a “deep state” conspiracy against Trump to see that the foreign service as a permanent bureaucracy has its own set of interests that is often at odds with the public interest, and certainly at odds with every Republican president.
This was evident in Taylor’s testimony where he seemed to hold military support for Ukraine as some sort of sacred duty of the U.S., which is decidedly odd given that that policy was introduced by Trump and rejected by his predecessor.
President Ronald Reagan found ways to deal with constant resistance from the foreign service. Trump could have crafted such a management strategy, or he could have come to town with a massive, unprecedented bold reform, clearing out the careerists and replacing them with people more responsive to Congress, Trump, and the public.
Trump faces the biggest problem of his presidency right now, in part because he has thought too small.
