James Mattis on Leadership

Now we have the James Mattis theory of leadership. If you want the president to be more presidential-- who among us does not?-- you trash him in public, you denounce him as a Nazi and you declare that he is incapable of providing leadership. That is, you ensure that whatever leadership he does or does not provide, people will not follow his lead. What good is a leader whose armies refuse to follow him? At the least, it’s an army in mutiny, and we know that this is not a good thing. Don't we?

To be more obvious than need be, Mattis was undermining the president and making it more difficult to lead.

Consider his ill-tempered remarks:

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that 'The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was 'Divide and Conquer...Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.' We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis - confident that we are better than our politics.' 

Does anyone think that his statement pointed toward unity. It was purely divisive.

We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society….

This feels more like a call to overthrow the leader than a step toward national reconciliation.

Of course, this is not the first time that the Obamafied brass and senior American leadership tried to mount a coup against President Trump. Of course, no one calls what happened in the bowels of the Pentagon on July 20, 2017 a coup, but clearly it was an attempt, by senior administration officials to take over for President Trump. The assembled officials thought that they were staging an intervention. They believed that Trump was too ignorant to conduct foreign policy. After all, he was siding with Israel against Iran and the Iran nuclear deal. And he was disparaging our alliances with the weak sisters of Western Europe.

In short, Mattis, Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson were standing up for international institutions and the old world order. They were striking a blow against Trump’s nationalist policies, policies that had brought him to the White House.

Of course, by doing it in front of other people, they were showing that they should be in charge. They were saying that they could not accept the leadership of President Trump. If so, they ought to have resigned before mounting a coup. As it happened, all three of the plotters were soon relieved of their duties.

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker described the scene, in portentous tones:

One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.

Note this: they were not trying to save the union but to preserve their belief in a world order and international institutions. They staged this intervention because they felt that Trump was too ignorant to govern. How about that for a show of confidence in leadership?

By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

You can call it an intervention, as though Trump needed therapy, or you can call it a tailored tutorial, but it happened in front of other people and it was intended to put Trump in his place and to undermine his leadership:

So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. 

Trump’s response is telling, but not as the authors imagine. Clearly, he understood that he was under attack and being threatened by insubordinate subordinates:

You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

So, an oil company executive, an investment banker and a general were standing up for the international order, and, incidentally for the Obama legacy. They were representing those who were leading the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, war efforts that had not been notably successful. When you have not been winning wars you have little standing to take over American foreign policy. They did not understand that the weak sisters of Western Europe were leeching off of American military power.

What happens when soldiers do not win wars?

They pretend to be philosophers.

Worse yet, they were flagrantly disrespecting the president and the presidency. They were doing their best to undermine his ability to lead. In that they have not been alone. Not an hour passes when someone somewhere, someone in government or someone in the media declares that Trump must be removed from any position of leadership.

Does that make it easier or harder for a president to lead?