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As I've been asked for some historical perspective on @John_Hudson & @jdawsey1's important article on John Bolton that included sharp insights from @thomaswright08, so I wanted to share the story of when Henry Kissinger got frozen out by Richard Nixon. wapo.st/30SGytu?tid=ss… 1/1
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 The news that essential business like Afghanistan is kept from Bolton-if true-is absolutely unprecedented. Though national security advisors have been on the outs before, no one's been so publicly sidelined, for so long, and with seemingly so little chance of getting back in. 2/2
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 By my quick calculation, HR McMaster, Michael Flynn, Jim Jones, Tony Lake, John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane, Judge Clark, and Richard Allen were all in the dog house at some point. Importantly: they all (save Lake) eventually departed if not prematurely than ignominiously. 3/3
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 Even Henry Kissinger, who is considered either the most or second most powerful national security advisor depending who’s counting, was on Nixon's bad side for much of the fall 1969. Most people don’t realize how close he came to getting ousted less than one year in the post. 4/4
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 The first thing to remember is that Kissinger was not a perfect fit for Nixon. Though they shared a worldview and paranoias, Kissinger was not a Nixon man or conservative in his habits, political leanings, or friendships. Kissinger was told as much. 5/5
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 By mid-October, according to WH Chief of Staff HR Haldeman's contemporaneous notes, Nixon was demonstrating a “growing intolerance” for Kissinger’s “attitudes and habits,” including his tendency to overreact. 6/6
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 Nixon started freezing Kissinger out, which only made Kissinger, who was insecure about his access, overreact even more. In addition, Kissinger was “getting heat for his staff inefficiency,” which, Haldeman believed, was the result of Kissinger’s “bottlenecking.” 7/7
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 It also resulted because Kissinger tended to blame everyone else for any issues. By the end of the October 1969, Haldeman later wrote, the “problem came to a head” when Kissinger started complaining again about State to Nixon, and Nixon promptly shut the meeting down. 8/8
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 Kissinger looked to be in bad shape with Nixon's inner circle, but he got rid of some distrusted staffers, worked to give Nixon the options to hit Vietnam hard by the November deadline, and became as obsequious as possible of Nixon and his WH team. 9/9
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 Kissinger came in from the cold but it’s important to remember that to get back in power, he had to help Nixon take his presidency over the edge -- Kissinger's own staff were the first folks wiretapped and going hard in Vietnam was hugely destructive at home and abroad. 10/10
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 The question now is why Bolton has not done what Kissinger did by going above and beyond to get on Trump's good side)? That’s a puzzle in part because Trump and Bolton are each odd and their partnership is odder than the sum of its parts. 11/11
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 That said, there seems to be some pattern of staking out a harder position clearly and even publicly on Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and now Afghanistan. Whether that's to walk away with at least his policy reputation intact is an open question. 12/12
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 What is clear is that breaking the process screwed Bolton in end. He made the NSC process far less formal and far less inclusive and it sounds like that's what someone just did to him on Afghanistan. 13/13
@John_Hudson @jdawsey1 @thomaswright08 Bolton, the savviest Washington insider Trump’s ever had working for him, just learned one of the town’s oldest lessons, one that Kissinger and Nixon learned the hard way too: Once you break a process it isn't there to save you when needed. 14/14
