Judd Gregg: The Donald Code

In a time when disruption is driving change in everything from hailing a taxi to global communications, it should be expected that government — especially the federal government — would also be impacted by disorder. 

 

It has been. It is intentional. And it comes in the person of President Donald Trump.

{mosads}But what is happening? Is there some predictability to this upheaval or is it instead arbitrary, spontaneous and disjointed?

Only a little more than three weeks into the Trump administration, a pattern seems to be developing.

Call it “The Donald Code.”

The list of things that have been jumbled is already fairly long: Mexican relations, Australian relations, oil pipeline plans, immigration policy, a possible new location (Jerusalem rather than Tel Aviv) for the U.S. embassy in Israel. The initiatives explode forth.  

But let’s focus on one action as a possible symbol of the larger picture.

This was the order to revamp the National Security Council (NSC).

The NSC has been at the center of most major decisions that have been made by presidents on how to engage with those in the world who threaten us. The body is designed to give the president the information and interpretations necessary to make decisions regarding our nation’s safety and survival.  

The president has reordered the NSC in a most interesting manner.  

He has directed that the person responsible for coordinating the collection and analyzing of intelligence be included in the meetings of the NSC only when invited, one presumes by the head of the council, retired General Michael Flynn. 

He has directed that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the person who is most knowledgeable on military readiness and capacity, also only be included when invited. 

The order also permanently includes a top White House political operative on the NSC, a strange juxtaposition.

It is a sweeping directive, not so much for its language or overt proposals, but rather for its subliminal statement of how the president intends to develop and execute operations and policy. 

It is a very public demotion of the Director of National Intelligence and the highest ranking uniformed military officer —  a one-two punch, of a kind, at those parts of the national security apparatus.  

At the same time, it is a dramatic statement of the importance of politics in the evolution of the president’s national security agenda.

Or maybe it is simply a demotion of the whole idea of the NSC as a needed source of counsel.

In outlining these theories, it must be said that it is inherently difficult to anticipate the course to be followed by this administration. 

This is because that course does seem to be greatly driven by what the person in the mirror says to the president on any given issue, on any given morning. And no one really seems to know what the person in the mirror is thinking. 

But this one action was telling, because it was not unique. It seemed to encompass most of the elements underlying the purposes and processes of this administration.

What does it portend for other areas of action?

Let’s take, for example, dealing with the Congress and especially Republicans in the Congress, as a possible test case for applying The Donald Code. Who gets demoted and what gets bypassed? 

The answer is fairly obvious: Everyone.    

At some point in the not-too-distant future, the president will decide he neither needs nor wants the counsel of Republicans, especially the leadership, in the Congress. He will act on his own intuition and move forward.

Where does he go? It is doubtful that he knows, yet. The elements of the moment will determine that. It may be that he proceeds on a course that is positive and good for the nation. It is equally possible that, to use the vernacular, he “steps in it.” But it will be largely his course and his alone.

The president’s actions, one suspect, will be pursuant to this Code. They will be his, singularly forthright; unattended by subtlety or complication; and fenced on all sides by his personal experience.

Elected Republicans across the country, not only in Washington, will be uniquely impacted by this Code but they may not understand it.  

The president will not really care if they do or do not.  

It is, after all, his Code and no one else’s.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.

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