But then the example of Gary Cohn stealing a letter off Trump’s desk to prevent him from dissolving the U.S.-South Korean trade compact seems closer to an example of the anti-democratic vice — because after all, Trump campaigned on renegotiating trade deals, didn’t he? And yet I’m sure Cohn justified himself on more existential grounds, imagining the unraveling of the peninsular security arrangement and, eventually, a horrifying war.
Russia policy presents a similar gray area. Our nuclear arsenals and security commitments make it an area of existential danger where ignorance and rashness need to be restrained. But at the same time Trump explicitly campaigned on a Russian rapprochement — so should we really cheer foreign policy hands who boast about frustrating that promise? But then on the other other hand, Trump’s personal behavior around Putin is, let’s be frank, super weird, in ways that make internal resistance more defensible
Such uncertainty means that sustaining the combination that I’ve suggested — yes to prudent resistance to rash behavior, no to ideological resistance to populist policy — would require constant self-scrutiny among the people trying to manage this presidency from within.
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