The President has decided to once again get into a public kerfuffle concerning Admiral (ret) William McRaven. This has, of course, led to a lot of retired senior officers, as well as former senior civilian appointees, to come to Admiral McRaven’s defense and to call out the President regarding his remarks. I think it is important that we step back a bit and try to understand what we are actually observing with this ongoing series of rebukes of the President by retired senior officers and civilian appointees. This is not some bizarre new era of partisanship or political polarization. Rather, what is happening, why these retired senior officials – uniformed and civilian – keep speaking up has to specifically do with this President, how he communicates, what he communicates, his behavior, and the official actions he’s taking.
Almost all of these officials either spent their careers with no partisan affiliation because they were serving in the US military or were senior civilian officials appointed by Republican presidents because they were considered to be part of the Republican/conservative national security and foreign policy establishment. We’ve even reached the point when a group of prominent conservative lawyers, many of whom have held senior appointments in previous Republican administration, have decided to make a very public break with this administration and its Federalist Society allies, which is separate from the pushback regarding Admiral McRaven. While what we’re seeing is unprecedented in modern American political history, it is not surprising. Each of these retired senior officials that are speaking up are doing so because in their professional estimation the President is something completely outside of the norms of American politics. And, as a result, they are forced to themselves do something outside of the norms by publicly speaking out. That failing to do so would mean they were failing in their professional responsibilities even in retirement.
Earlier today COL (ret) Jack Jacobs, who is both a Medal of Honor awardee and a self described political conservative, was interviewed by Nicole Wallace about the President’s most recent dustup about Admiral McRaven. The clip is below and it is well worth the four or five minutes of your time.
"[Adm. McRaven] …somebody who’s a patriot and not only is a patriot, but spent his entire career raising another generation of patriots…castigating somebody like that demonstrates a lack of knowledge about how the world actually works"- @ColJackJacobs w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/1EdfdDDbgK
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) November 19, 2018
I can honestly state that I was not expecting a reference to Rabbi Hillel in his response to Wallace’s question!
Open thread!