Jonah Goldberg asked Thursday night if anyone “left, right, or center” (and surely in y-or-z-dimensional space, too) had made a compelling argument that the anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times advanced its author’s “alleged cause of the country.” The way Jonah framed it, answering the question isn’t a matter of personal opinion—it’s a matter of putting oneself in Anonymous’s shoes and showing that the author accomplished what he or she set out to do.
What the author set out to do behind closed doors and set out to do writing about it are, in fact, two separate aims. The first cause, Anonymous explains, is “to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting [President] Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
Of course, the op-ed itself does not help achieve this goal. If anything, writing it for public consumption is the stratagem of a stock movie villain. There is no reason for someone to divulge his plans to an opponent unless it is to taunt him—a theory floated (though not advocated) by Ken White, who wondered if the article could “be designed to make things MUCH worse, to provoke a crisis,” thereby making the president “actionably unhinged.” This would be Trumanesque foreign policy used for a palace coup: Inflicting unprecedented damage in the short term to avoid yet worse consequences in the future. To even guesstimate the costs and benefits of such a ploy is preposterous. But regardless, it is anarchic and irresponsible to cheer for a constitutional emergency. And Anonymous explicitly wrote that the intra-administration resistance did not want to instigate one, at least by one method.
“Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis,” the author writes. “So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.”
There is another point to note about the scenario suggested by White: It assumes that the op-ed’s audience is the president, not the public. This brings us to Anonymous’s second stated intent—and there is a second stated intent. It is to initiate a public information campaign for, the author implies, the country’s benefit. It is clear from Anonymous’s writing that the national perspective about the Trump administration—better yet, the national worry about it—is a concern unto itself.
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author writes—should know. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
What would prompt Anonymous to write “that there are adults in the room” other than the assumption that the public fears there aren’t any? And why bother for any reason but the feeling that the public needs to be aware?
Bridging this information gap reads like it’s essential to the op-ed’s purpose. One class of American news consumers—the obsessed ones—could no doubt conclude from previous reports that some of the president’s aides were acting in the manner the author describes. The disconnect between the president’s rhetoric about Russia—his impulsiveness broadcast to the world—and the administration’s substantive approach toward the Putin regime is a prime example.
The Helsinki summit achieved wide media exposure. But America’s policy posture toward Russia is no secret—Congress has not approved sanctions in the dark, and the White House has punished Putin cronies in broad daylight. What could explain this incongruity but a movement inside the administration to, as Anonymous writes, “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”? The author explains:
“On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better—such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”
There is more evidence of similar efforts than just logical inference: Axios reported last August about a rumored “informal,” “loose alliance” comprising seven members of the National Security Council who saw themselves “as an unofficial committee to protect Trump and the nation from disaster.”
But “diligent news consumers” aside, it is improbable that the majority of the country has the faintest idea about this “Committee to Save America,” as Axios dubbed it, even if bread crumbs of its existence have been scattered throughout press reports the last year-plus. It is evident that few Americans pay close attention to palace intrigue, even if this is a kind of it with ramifications for the country. It is rather an interest of the politically immersed, the most concentrated collective of which congregates on Twitter. But only 11 percent of American adults use the platform for news—and of that 11 percent, it is all but certain that only a fraction has read and absorbed accounts of what John Kelly and Jim Mattis have been up to in private.
Consider the reach, then, that Anonymous’s op-ed has achieved since being published on Wednesday evening. It led network newscasts that same night. It instantly became the nation’s most talked-about story (an extraordinary feat given the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh). It is at the forefront of public discourse from myriad angles: Who wrote it? What does it mean? And, as Jonah inquired, what does it accomplish? The longer these questions remain unanswered—and some of them will be debatable forever—the more the story will be impressed upon Americans’ minds.
An information campaign could have a goal other than to provoke the president: to tamp down public anxiety. America is on edge. Its faith in national institutions, including government, have continued to erode year over year this century, to the point that trust in them is colored almost entirely by partisan affiliation. National security experts have raised the alarm about the threat this sort of discord poses to the country.
“My choice … for what threatens America most is … our internal political divisions,” wrote Richard Haass—in 2015. “The divisions are between the White House and Congress but also within the parties and between the citizens and their government. …
“The result is a country weaker than it should be, failing to set an example others want to emulate. The same divisions make us less reliable, leading friends to take matters into their own hands and foes to challenge us in the belief they have little to fear.”
Anonymous would almost certainly say there is less to fear about the United States when its president speaks so kindly of tyrants, its electoral process is so susceptible to outside influence with the realistic goal of sowing discord, and its government is distracted by a dramatic legal investigation of official Trumpworld. Trump’s defenders would say such a perspective is hogwash. But these individuals aren’t necessarily the op-ed author’s audience.
That group shares a common trait, which indeed could be shared among Trump sympathizers and opponents alike: unawareness of what transpires inside the White House. Such information typically is filtered through the media, either embedded in mainstream reports or distorted by prime-time cable news hosts. Here is something different: an official supposedly giving it to the country straight.
It is reasonable to assume that if Anonymous believes the U.S. government is on the precipice, the public has a right to know—and ought to be reassured that “there are adults in the room” trying to prevent it from tumbling. Based on media dispersion, it is likely that upwards of 90 percent of American adults weren’t aware of even a whiff of this prior to Wednesday—and an even higher percentage of the salient details. Whether this internal challenge is justified and positive for the country, and whether making the public aware of it is a net good, are beside the point. If the author’s contention is that the public is now on a need-to-know basis about White House’s inner-workings, the op-ed must be considered a success by Anonymous’s suggested intent.
