John Bolton Shows the Dangers of a Weak President
Donald Trump is losing the battle against his own executive branch. Chaos is the result.
Watch your back.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Just how weak a president has Donald Trump become? For an illustration, see a terrific Washington Post article on the foreign-policy decision-making process since John Bolton became Trump’s national security adviser. Or, rather, the absence of anything resembling a process.
As Heather Hurlburt pointed out when Bolton took the job, he's ill-suited for it. Bolton is a policy advocate, not the honest broker that the position calls for. That's a particular problem for Trump. Because the president is inexperienced in national-security matters, he doesn’t know whether Bolton is speaking for the experts on a policy question or just advocating for his own preferences. Because Trump knows little about the executive branch, Bolton can use his bureaucratic skills to advance his own agenda — including impeding Trump's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.