1. Trump's foreign policy represents the value, and limitations, of "personnel is policy."
2. Trump has surrounded himself with an excellent foreign policy/national security team. It's gotten better as the Bannonites washed out. When he lets them do their jobs, they've done a lot of good.
3. Trump himself, by contrast, makes no end of mistakes when he personally conducts foreign policy. Often this involves doing things his subordinates are on record - even while in their current jobs - opposing.
4. Up to a point, this can work - Trump as the bad cop, or even at times the good cop. But more often, it leaves the professionals stuck trying to explain away or clean up his messes.
5. The strongest part of Trump's domestic record is on the judiciary, where he has let the existing conservative brain trust do its thing. Foreign policy is - along with trade - where he has most conspicuously rejected that brain trust to chart a new course.
6. But the people he's hired are still largely in sync with the pre-2016 Republican foreign policy schools of thought. So, personnel makes policy - but schizophrenic policy because the principal is going in a different direction from his senior advisors.
7. That has left his people to take different tacks. Mattis has mostly avoided speaking in public on camera, to minimize being quoted going against the president. Haley, by contrast, stays at a safe remove in NY where she can stand for the old moral clarity.
8. So long as the Administration's foreign policy/national security team is mainly staffed by people who don't want us to go where Trump does, his foreign policy approach will last - even within the GOP - only so long as he holds power.
9. But Trump can make a lot of trouble in the meantime. And if the good people in the Admin get replaced with more Trumpish folks, there could be a longer term continuation.
10. It's easier to make the case, domestically, that those of us who were Never Trump in 2016 should take the good of Trump over the bad. Ditto his fp/natsec team. But his personal performance on the foreign policy/national security stage continues to be unacceptable.
11. Which is why the national security conservatives have been the most hardcore still-Never-Trump faction. Because (along w/trade) that's the policy area where it's hardest to defend or excuse his personal approach without wholly abandoning everything you've ever stood for.
12. But give me the Trump Administration without Trump, and I'd be mostly comfortable with its foreign policy. Therein lies the internal tension that won't be sustainable over the long run.
13. Meanwhile, of course, liberal critics will see responsible people working for Trump and trying to mitigate the damage, and demand that they all resign so Trump can go Full Trump on national security & foreign policy matters.
No thank you.
No thank you.
Illustrates my point about Mattis
