Gen. Kelly, too, now tarnished by Trump

Jennifer Rubin, the "conservative voice" at the Washington Post and frequent guest news analyst on MSNBC, is someone I respect and admire.   The only problem is that it's hard to see why she's considered a conservative voice.  She's strongly and dismissively anti-Trump, and I've rarely thought she sounded much different from the liberal anchors interviewing her.  I guess we've lost sight of that wing of conservatism that doesn't sound so far-out radical.

Nevertheless, she does write a blog for WaPo called "The Right Turn," and she previously wrote for The Weekly Standard.   So she is a good one to give us what I hope will be the last word we need to consider on Trump's muffed attempt to console a Gold Star widow and Gen. Kelly's botched attempt to clean up his mess.  Her article is titled "We're down to Mattis, I guess."

She's referring to the hope that was expressed just a short time back that the trio of Sec. of State Tillerson, Sec. of Defense Mattis, and Chief of Staff Kelly were the ones who would provide "adult supervision" for Trump's White House.  And we all felt some relief that the world might not be in quite so much danger as we feared.

National Security Adviser Gen. McMaster, originally included among the adults, did himself harm weeks back when he had to go before the news cameras and try to clear up another Trump mess (I can't even remember which one now) -- and it didn't go too well for him.   He's kept a very low profile since then.   And Tillerson tried, but couldn't avoid, getting pitted against his boss Trump when their public statements about talking with the North Koreans contradicted each other.  And then, to make matters worse, someone  leaked that Tillerson had once called Trump a "moron," and Trump retaliated (by tweet, of course) that he'd beat Tillerson in an IQ test.

And now Kelly joins the ranks of those who gets too involved with Donald Trump and suffer the fate of becoming tarnished themselves.  Witness Tillerson, McMaster, and now Kelly -- thus the title:  "We're down to Mattis, I guess."

How has Gen. Mattis managed to stay clean?   As someone explained, as Secretary of Defense, he is not physically located in the White House but over at the Pentagon and thus has less contact.   In fact, he tends not to get involved with any White House issues other than those involving Defense.   Which also means that, although he's definitely an adult, he's not around to give the daily/hourly supervision.

So what further did Jennifer have to say?   Here are some excerpts:

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"Recognition is now sinking in that Kelly is not so different than all the other politicians and officials who come in contact with Trump. To serve him requires suspension of integrity, and therefore those who serve become morally corrupted. . . .  One can hear a palpable sense of sadness after last week’s events, a sense of disillusionment.

"After Kelly came out to play defense for Trump over his handling of calls to Gold Star families, smeared Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) and refused to apologize, launched a Trumpian soliloquy about the good old days (when women were “sacred,” but not in the workforce) and elevated the moral stature of service members over mere civilians, it was hard to argue he was anything more than a Trump enabler.

"Susan Glasser of Politico appearing on 'Face the Nation' observed, 'We’re not surprised Donald Trump behaved this way . . . .  [But Kelly's disappointing performance underscored] . . . that it remains Donald Trump’s White House and not John Kelly’s White House, even if he has imposed more discipline and more of a process . . . .'

[Jennifer Rubin continues]  ". . . . Kelly’s fall from grace was swift and senseless. It was all so unnecessary; he need not have gone out to spin for the president.  The verdict on Kelly was remarkably negative, whether it was retired Gen. David Petraeus musing that Kelly was no doubt trying to figure out how to turn down the volume, or longtime GOP political strategist Matthew Dowd -- [who said] . . . '[D]oes [Kelly] know who he works for? He talks about the sacredness of Gold Star families and [yet] . . . he works for a guy that attacked Gold Star families and attacked John McCain as a prisoner. . . . He says we lost the sacredness of religion, and he works for somebody that wanted to ban Muslims.'

[And I might add that, as head of Homeland Security, Kelly was all in on enforcing Trump's insanely precipitous, first travel ban. -- RR]

[Rubin]: "So from adult day-care shift supervisor to enabler in a short week, Kelly sacrificed a good deal of his utility to the president for nothing. [and] . . . undercut his own stature as a guarantor of our democratic norms. . . .

"Those harboring unrealistic expectations about Kelly have learned once again: None of Trump’s advisers can make up for the deficits of this president; and with a lonely exception of Mattis, all of them look worse for having tried."

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Despite his not being in the daily White House mix, there's still hope for Mattis standing firm for adult behavior.   When Trump decided to abolish Obama's plan to allow transgender troops to serve openly, Mattis employed the old tactic of not contradicting the boss but just slow-walking it, setting up a study commission to come up with a plan for implementation, and then letting it sort of get lost in the bureaucracy, at least for now.

I think we can assume that, since Kelly has not by now apologized for his false accusation against Rep. Wilson, he will not do so.   They did float the lame excuse that the video only showed her formal speech, not all the other things she said during other activities of the day, thus implying that she did say what he claimed, just not from the podium.

So be it.  The damage has been done.  We have a pretty good measure of Trump, who will  never apologize for anything, ever.  And now we see what a tarnished Kelly will do.    So let's move on . . . without the Kelly comfort, which we now know couldn't last.   Or if he tried, then he wouldn't last.

Better to have a tarnished Kelly than whoever could be persuaded to take Kelly's place.

Ralph