Rather than broadening the range of voices who have a place at the table and who can provide him with diverse analysis about how to handle the crises that the nation faces, Trump seems instead to be getting rid of anyone who sings even a slightly different tune.
With any president, such insular thinking is a problem. President Lyndon Johnson banished critics of the Vietnam War such as his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, from his inner council of advisers. This was also evident when President George W. Bush only heard "yes" men and women as he dragged the United States into the disastrous Iraq War.
In Trump's case, the problem could be even worse. This President is so lacking in experience and is so unstable it is triply urgent to have countervailing forces present at the table to help guide him through the rest of his presidency.
But there is no evidence that Trump recognizes this need, and these departures place the country in an enormously risky place. The United States has been lucky that we have not yet faced a major national security or economic crisis since 2017 that would require the President to figure his way through an explosive situation. The odds are this will happen at some point. During such moments as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 or on 9/11, even the wisest president needs to hear all the options on the table and needs to hear from advisers who strongly disagree with him. The nation already got a taste for how things could go terribly wrong with Trump's failed response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the hurricane in Puerto Rico.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/16/opin...chamber-around-him-opinion-zelizer/index.html
With any president, such insular thinking is a problem. President Lyndon Johnson banished critics of the Vietnam War such as his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, from his inner council of advisers. This was also evident when President George W. Bush only heard "yes" men and women as he dragged the United States into the disastrous Iraq War.
In Trump's case, the problem could be even worse. This President is so lacking in experience and is so unstable it is triply urgent to have countervailing forces present at the table to help guide him through the rest of his presidency.
But there is no evidence that Trump recognizes this need, and these departures place the country in an enormously risky place. The United States has been lucky that we have not yet faced a major national security or economic crisis since 2017 that would require the President to figure his way through an explosive situation. The odds are this will happen at some point. During such moments as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 or on 9/11, even the wisest president needs to hear all the options on the table and needs to hear from advisers who strongly disagree with him. The nation already got a taste for how things could go terribly wrong with Trump's failed response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the hurricane in Puerto Rico.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/16/opin...chamber-around-him-opinion-zelizer/index.html
