Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote a riveting piece in the Washington Post where he admonished Republicans who are appeasing President Trump.
Michael Gerson, was not kind to Paul Ryan as he believes Republicans are not sufficiently panicky about their titular leader, a Donald Trump divorced from reality.
In the midst of a governing crisis, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has once again risen to his role as the voice of bland complacency. Concerning the open warfare between President Trump and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Ryan advises “these two gentlemen to sit down and just talk through their issues.”
Further, he points out that with all his flaws, the Presidents most concerning is that he is psychologically and morally incapable of being president.
GOP denial about Trump has generally taken Ryan’s form. The president may be eccentric and divisive, but Republicans need to keep their heads down and think of tax reform. This assumes that the main challenge is to avoid distraction from essential tasks.
But the real problem has always been Trump’s fundamental unfitness for high office. It is not Trump’s indiscipline and lack of leadership, which make carrying a legislative agenda forward nearly impossible. It is not his vulgarity and smallness, which have been the equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the Washington Monument. It is not his nearly complete ignorance of policy and history, which condemns him to live in the eternal present of his own immediate desires.
No, Corker has given public permission to raise the most serious questions: Is Trump psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?
Gerson wants Republicans to wake up. He thinks it is time to panic and so he is admonishing his party leaders.
The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. Already, Trump’s protests of eternal love for Kelly are a bad sign for the general’s future. The American government now has a dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell — perhaps as thin as Donald Trump’s skin.
Any elected Republican who shares Corker’s concerns has a political and moral duty to state them in public. If Corker is correct, many of his colleagues do have such fears. Their silence is deafening and damning.
“Brave men are all vertebrates,” said G.K. Chesterton. “They have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover, and their softness is inside.”
More than anything else at this moment, the nation has need of Republican vertebrates.
It goes without saying that Michael Gerson does not think much of the fortitude of Republicans. Unfortunately, the soft overthrow of an unfit president by his party won’t come easy, even though it may be in progress.
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