My letter to the president

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Times-News Online

February 19, 2017

Mr. President (with a copy to James Baker):

Have you noticed all the viscous black fluid on the floor of the Oval Office, Mr. President? I’m confident you have since there is so much of it. It’s oil. The White House is leaking oil. With all respect, Mr. President, you are responsible for the mess.

Once your staff gets you copies of what I have written about you in my columns over the past year and a half, I suspect that this letter will have little beneficial effect, although in my defense I’ve been far more critical of Hillary Clinton than of you. But I offer the advice that follows because I believe all Americans are obligated to help any president succeed. Because when the president succeeds, the nation is well served.

I had the privilege of serving as a federal employee for 36 years from 1964-2001. During that time, I was staff director of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Health Subcommittee, an NIH associate director and a member of the Senior Executive Service. My tenure spanned the terms of seven presidents from LBJ to Bill Clinton, more than enough to see the good, the bad and the ugly.

The challenges you now face, having won an election that most of official Washington and its allies in the media, academe and private sector believed to be impossible, are historic and daunting.

You know Washington is broken. You know the government no longer serves the American people because it spends its energy and our money serving itself. You know that both political parties are part of the problem, not the solution. And you know that you aim to fix that problem. But aiming to fix the problem and knowing how to fix it are not the same thing.

The magnitude of what you hope to accomplish is staggeringly large and complex. The odds of success, even under the best of circumstances, are de minimis. There is no room for unforced errors in your effort to make America great again.

And yet there is abundant evidence that, since your inauguration, there has been a cascade of unforced errors flowing from the White House. Such errors only serve to reinforce the deep and intractable divisions in Washington and in the heartland. Those errors better enable your opponents to thwart your ambitious program.

You can’t reform the Washington leviathan by shooting from the hip, especially 140 characters at a time. You can’t expect a White House staff to serve you and all of the rest of us well when its strength is running a political campaign and not reforming a government that is systemically broken, unaccountable and out of control. The bureaucracy, its allies on K Street and Democrats on the Hill do not regard you and your team as the “Christmas help” for nothing.

Here’s a sampler of the unforced errors: First off is the inaccurate and inappropriate response you made to Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday when O’Reilly referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderer.”

As you know, Vietnam war hero Gen. Barry McCaffrey reacted to your comments by saying, “I’m actually incredulous that the president would make a statement like that. One could argue that’s the most anti-American statement ever made by the president of the United States. To confuse American values with Putin ... .” McCaffrey’s reaction, sir, shakes me to the core. You, too, should find it jarring.

But there is more, much more. It’s now clear that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence with respect to his telephone call to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, concerning possible sanctions against Russia. His resignation was inevitable.

Press secretary Sean Spicer’s behavior has harmed your administration’s relations with the press and enabled “Saturday Night Live” to butcher him to the delight of its many viewers. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s inappropriate lambasting of Nordstrom in defense of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line has led to a bipartisan call from Capitol Hill for an investigation by the Office of Government Ethics.

And on the Sunday talk shows last weekend, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said that “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” Anyone familiar with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution knows that such questioning, called judicial review, is part of the fabric of our government.

If I could wave a magic wand, Mr. President, I would rid your White House of several more of the key individuals you have put in place. They are not serving you well not because they are disloyal. They are not serving you well because they don’t have the skill sets that would give them a fighting chance to properly advise you. I would replace them with individuals equipped to help you govern this great nation.

However, I have no such magic wand. So here’s an alternative suggestion: Pick up the phone and call James Baker. Tell him you need his immediate advice and counsel. Be prepared to hear him out one on one, and be prepared to not like what you hear. Then follow his advice and clean up the oil slick on the floor of the Oval Office, by tasking Pence, not Priebus, to put this right.

Although your administration is young, Mr. President, the hour is late.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. I welcome comments.  Please contact me at:

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