President
Trump pledged in his campaign that he would not be predictable. He’s
more than lived up to that promise this week, and along the way, he has
made a hash out of the way business is being done in Washington.
Three
times this week, Trump abruptly and unexpectedly changed course,
lending credence to perceptions of a presidency in chaos. The biggest
bombshell came Thursday afternoon when Trump announced that Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis would leave the administration at the end of
February, and Mattis’s resignation letter explicitly stated that he and
the president were not in alignment on major policy issues or on
America’s role in the world.
The Mattis news
rattled nerves in Washington and no doubt in capitals around the world.
It came at the end of another roller coaster day in the history of a
presidency that has had many of them. The day began with Trump, for the
second time in a week, reversing course on funding for a border wall. He
demanded that Congress include funds for the wall, just as a compromise
bill without the money he wants was making its way through Congress in
an effort to avert a government shutdown this weekend.
Trump’s
allies were already reeling from the announcement via tweet on
Wednesday that he was ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.
On this announcement, there was no warning to U.S. allies or to members
of Congress, including many in his party who opposed the move — no
warning even to some in his administration.
Trump
is, by his own words, a dealmaker without peer, but his volatility
overwhelms his reliability. He demonstrated anew this week that he can
change his mind at any moment. Those around him are left to adapt, to
pick up the pieces, to explain as best they can — including those whose
advice he has spurned or whose words have been shredded by his actions.
In this case, it appeared to have cost him the services of his defense
secretary.
Give the president some credit. His
goals remain fixed. He wants a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, or at
least he wants the issue of demanding one to use against Democrats, who
oppose the wall.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), right, speaks to members of the media while House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) listens following a meeting with President Trump. (Zach Gibson/Bloomberg News)
He
wants the most robust military in the world, but he doesn’t seem to
want to use it. He has been consistent in questioning the commitment of
U.S. forces in trouble spots such as Syria and Afghanistan. On national
security policy, he remains a rhetorically muscular noninterventionist.
With the announcement on Syria, the focus quickly shifted to the
question of whether he would order a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces in
Afghanistan.
However
consistent he has been in enunciating goals, though, he has not shown
much mastery of navigating the legislative process or of developing
support from allies for his foreign policy objectives. He leads by
impulse, by upending the status quo, leaving friends and adversaries to
scramble.
This is not an entirely unsuccessful
approach. His trade policies, for example, have roiled relationships,
but he has gotten the attention of China, whose policies have been
criticized by past presidents and leaders in other nations for years.
For that, other nations are no doubt grateful, even if no one is certain
how the ongoing dispute will be resolved or when. This week, he signed a
new farm bill, and he will soon be able to sign a criminal justice
reform bill that was approved with overwhelming, bipartisan support.
But
the turmoil that goes along with those successes has badly strained the
system, and these past few days have highlighted that reality once
again. The path he has followed in pursuit of $5 billion in funding for a
border wall in the latest spending bill is emblematic of his unorthodox
— some would call it destructive — governing style.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), joined by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), left, and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), right, arrives to speak to reporters about the possibility of a partial government shutdown. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
He
staged an Oval Office argument with House Speaker-designate Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer
(D-N.Y.). He was told he didn’t have the votes for the $5 billion he
wanted. He said he would take a shutdown rather than a walk back.
Alarmed
Republican allies in Congress, who wanted no part of a shutdown if
possible, began pressing for a way out, and earlier in the week, it
appeared they had gotten the attention of the White House when the
announcement came that it would look for other ways to fund the wall.
Meanwhile, the president continued the fiction that taxpayers would not
be paying for the wall. Not even the fuzziest of math could make that
explanation credible.
Trump’s
retreat early in the week was enough to get Congress to move toward an
agreement on a short-term bill to keep the government open until after
the new year, without the $5 billion Trump was demanding.
Few
Republican members of Congress wanted to make this fight at this
moment, against united Democratic opposition. But the story line of the
funding fight included the claim that Trump had once again caved on a
central promise of his candidacy, that he had blustered and then backed
down.
On Thursday morning, the dam broke at the
White House, and congressional leaders were put in a near-impossible
position to find a solution. Congress has until Friday night to find a
new way to avoid a government shutdown. The president said he would
shoulder the blame if the shutdown occurs. What lawmakers would probably
appreciate more than that is for the president to become part of the
solution, rather than adding to the problems they already have.
The
president’s explanation for the decision to withdraw troops from Syria
went through a series of rewritings. Trump’s initial tweet stated that
the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, had been defeated in Syria and
that that was why the troops could come home. “We have won against
ISIS,” he said in a White House video. “We’ve beaten them, and we’ve
beaten them badly. We’ve taken back the land, and now it’s time for our
troops to come back home.”
In doing so, he
ignored statements over months from others in his administration that
offered contrary analysis and commitments. While the Islamic State has
suffered significant losses of territory in Syria, other administration
officials say, it has not been defeated. Beyond that, administration
officials had vowed to keep U.S. forces there as long as necessary, to
counter Iranian influence and activity.
By
Thursday, Trump had moved to a different explanation, one that no doubt
comes closer to his true feelings. He asked, “Does the USA want to be
the Policeman of the Middle East. . . Do we want to be there forever?
Time for others to finally fight.”
He said —
despite contrary evidence — that Russia, Iran and Syria were unhappy
because they now would have to fight the Islamic State alone, which only
a day earlier he had claimed had been defeated. Then, in one more
burst, he added, “I am building by far the most powerful military in the
world. ISIS hits us they are doomed!”
Mattis
made clear in his resignation letter that he and the president do not
see eye to eye on rising threats from Russia and China or on the
importance of maintaining “the solidarity of our alliances.” His
departure will leave a sizable void in the administration’s national
security apparatus and, more significantly, point to the potential for
more chaos in the months ahead.
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