Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump desperately needs some outside help to save his presidency

Donald Trump made a big deal about his new National Security Strategy (NSS), touting a new era of stalwart vigilance when he delivered a speech earlier this week. His predecessors, he said, had frittered away American dominance. He, and he alone, as Trump likes to say, would restore it. Except, as his national security council spokesman Michael Anton, explained on Monday, when it came to the actual document:

‘I can’t say that he’s read every line and every word. He certainly had the document …and has been briefed on it.’

Hmmm. Give points to Anton for trying to put the best spin on matters without purveying any falsehoods. But presumably the president should be abreast of a document that, as the New York Times put it, essentially calls for a return to the cold war, targeting both Russia and China as adversaries. In his speech, however, Trump swerved markedly away from the tough notes sounded in the NSS to talk about the potential for peace with America’s adversaries.

The back and forth served to underscore once again that the Trump administration is a house divided on foreign policy, starting with the president himself. It zigs when it wants to zag and zags when it wants to zig. There’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announcing that talking with North Korea would be a good idea. Then the White House says it isn’t. And so on. What to do?

One of the things that has been missing in the administration is any outreach to the kind of wise men—George F. Kennan, Averell Harriman, Clark Clifford, Brent Scowcroft, and so on – that previous presidents would seek out for counsel. Dean Acheson met with his old nemesis Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to Gerald Ford and George H.W.

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