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Bob Woodward's "Fear" is on a shelf with the literature of Crazy Kings, next to Robert Graves' "I, Claudius", with the Roman Emperor Caligula and "The Emperor" by Ryszard Kapuściński. Selassie. These books are masterpieces of fictionalized history, while "Fear" is a remarkable feat of prose-based reporting that could not be called literary. But they are alike in their atmosphere of fear – the feeling of claustrophobia and tightness as the power is totally anchored in reality, and no one in the palace is immune to the wild impulses of the ruler. There is nothing comparable in American journalism, except perhaps Woodward's The Final Days, co-authored with Carl Bernstein, about the fall of Richard Nixon. Yet even Nixon, drunk late at night and talking to the paintings of the White House residence, seems relatively healthy and pitiful compared to Donald Trump. You half expect to find the Woodward Trump ordering the execution of the entire National Security Council, declaring himself a god on Twitter, and then anointing his daughter as heir to the throne.
The title of the book comes from the definition of "real power" given by Trump, whether in terms of political weight or the ability to intimidate a woman he has victimized. But the fear around his presidency has nothing to do with his clever use of bullying and all that relates to the dangerous consequences of his erratic behavior. At the heart of Trump is a need to always look strong, which, of course, makes him weak. In several scenes, a councilor or another struggles to find the right and flattering words that will prevent the president from launching a nuclear war.
Nobody has respect for Trump. During the book, his chief of staff called him "an idiot"; his secretary of state places him to "a fucking moron"; his secretary of defense compares him to an eleven-year-old; His main economic adviser and his personal lawyer consider him respectively as "a professional liar" and "a fucking liar". Various denials have been made. Gary Cohn, the economic advisor, tells him in the face that he's "a fucking asshole," while Trump calls Cohn "a fucking globalist." When Cohn tries to resign for the first time, Trump mocks him and his betrayal. There is no limit to cabinet members and generals that Trump is eager to insult his colleagues or shoot by tweet. The mode of operation of his White House is a vicious cruelty and unscrupulous, and the poison spreads to all. Only snakes and sycophants survive.
You may have already felt it, but you did not know it with such nauseating specificity. In the absence of an Oval Office registration system like the one that destroyed Nixon during the Watergate, Woodward's interviews, conducted under the veil, are a fairly complete substitute. One of his most detailed and revealing scenes takes place in the Tank, the secure, windowless meeting room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the summer of 2017. Cohn and the Secretary of Defense James Mattis conspire to bring Trump to the Pentagon to make him understand the importance of the international order of security partnerships and commercial treaties led by the United States. The presentation quickly collapses under the sophisticated questioning of Steve Bannon. Trump, who only cares about making a profit on his allies, keeps repeating, "It's bullshit!" He announces his intention to break the defense treaty with South Korea. I'm mad "- and soon leave.
South Korea – its trade surplus with the United States, the cost of US troops and defense systems – is an obsession of Trump, and perhaps the closest thing to "fear" to a principle narrative organizer. The book begins with Cohn's deletion of a one-paragraph letter awaiting Trump's signature on the Oval Office desk that would put an end to the trade agreement between the two countries. Cohn relies on the president's wavering conscience to make him forget the letter and impulse to undermine an important ally. But Trump continues to demand another draft, because destroying alliances is – with the hatred of the press – his true unquenchable passion in politics. His endurance in pursuit of these demons is impressive. Every day in his White House has the feeling of disintegration of the last days, but the next day is the same and the story never ends.
Although Woodward rarely quotes people who speak to him directly, it is not difficult to discern some of his main sources in the White House: Cohn; Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus; his secretary of staff Rob Porter. In the acquitted style of Woodward, they appear as civil servants making personal sacrifices for the good of the country – in the same category as Anonymous, the author of Time Op-Ed on the internal "resistance" to Trump. Cohn's subterfuge with the letter becomes an act of patriotism – he is one of the adults who must stay in the room. Woodward's reports expose, perhaps inadvertently, what is the vanity of this idea.
Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, sees everything in terms of political advantage and encourages Trump's polarizing instinct to rule as president of his base. Cohn, the group's democrat, decides not to resign with Trump's weakness on white nationalism, in order to pass an extremely regressive tax law that will leave the next generation with nearly two billion dollars in debt. The tariffs, not the neo-Nazis, finally persuade him to resign. Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, is reduced to crawling. "I'm with you," he tells Trump after the meeting in the tank. H. R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor, is treated with astonishing contempt. John Kelly, Priebus' volatile replacement as chief of staff, has a lower attention span than Trump. None of them have anything to say about the corrosion of American democracy by Trump. If that's the resistance, we watch it get crushed. At the end of "fear," Trump won in a rout.
Woodward has written some sort of bookends in the history of Nixon, and the ghost of the scandal that launched his career haunts the Trump White House. "All the men of the president," Woodward's first collaboration with Bernstein, was at the heart of a detective story, and the evidence led the reporters to the Oval Office. We do not yet know the outcome of Robert Mueller's investigation of collusion and obstruction of justice, but in a way it does not matter. The real crime is already in plain sight. ♦
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