The untenability of President BoltonSpectator, Jun 21, 2019, Curt Mills
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The question, surely, should be: why is it ‘Bolton vs. Trump’? Is Bolton not subordinate to the president? Bolton takes pains to insist that, as national security adviser, he does not set policy — the president does. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however.
It’s a precarious position for the NSA to be in. The apex of one’s power can also be the apogee of one’s exposure. Ambassador Bolton has been jokingly referred to as ‘President Bolton’ in national security circles for months, a potential mark of death. Many Trump officials — Steve Bannon and James Mattis most prominently come to mind, for differing reasons — have been dubbed ‘deputy presidents’ for a time only to find that the president didn’t approve of the apparent diss to his authority. Only ties of family have saved the current deputy president Jared Kushner.
Bolton may not be so lucky. The president and the ambassador openly don’t agree, and aren’t personally close. Pompeo, who will seek the presidency after Trump, does not want to be the Donald Rumsfeld of the Iran war. And Bannon, who as I reported laid the original groundwork for Bolton to become NSA, told Virginia Trump chair and radio host John Fredericks Friday morning: ‘This Iran thing is very disturbing.’
‘NSAs are advisers, not policy makers,’ retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a favorite of Fox News host Tucker Carlson told me Friday. Carlson has been instrumental in talking the president away from the course of his more wily advisers. And, as I’ve reported, Macgregor is seen in administration circles as an NSA in waiting. ‘Ideally,’ Macgregor says, national security advisers ‘should be seen, not heard.’
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https://spectator.us/untenability-president-bolton/
