The Ghost of Richard Darman

Although the internet tells me that Richard Darman, the éminence grise of the “deep state” during the Reagan-Bush years, died in 2008, apparently he is alive and working in the Trump White House.* Or at least his ghost is haunting the White House mess.

I was on airplanes again yesterday afternoon crossing the country, arriving late at night on the east coast, and hence missed the afternoon firestorm over the anonymous New York Times op-ed from a “senior administration official” (but likely someone on the White House staff) about how a “resistance” cabal inside the White House stops Trump from being Trump. I can easily imagine the exact same piece being written by Richard Darman during the Reagan presidency. It is well known that when Reagan’s stalwart speechwriters produced a speech draft that was faithful to Reagan’s views, Darman would yell at them that “It’s our job to save Reagan from himself!”

And it was reported contemporaneously, by Lou Cannon and others, that the so-called “pragmatist” wing of the staff waged a constant campaign to limit Reagan’s access to conservative publications. They called it the “‘Human Events’ problem,” because Reagan would read an item in Human Events or National Review about some bureaucratic perfidy and call the cabinet official or agency head demanding that it be looked into and fixed.

As I have said repeatedly here in past, Trump is no Ronald Reagan, yet I can’t help but notice that many of the very same complaints made now about Trump were made about Reagan, especially his supposed lack of focus, uninformed views, or irrelevant interjections in meetings. Most of which turned out to be wrong. The real source of this kind of criticism was the Stockholm Syndrome of the Republican establishment, which had mentally capitulated before the citadels of liberalism and weren’t comfortable with the frontal challenge Reagan represented both substantively and stylistically. Didn’t Reagan know that you’re supposed to conduct yourself in the style of an Aspen Institute panel discussion?

Several things about this op-ed are odd, starting with the timing. First, what is the top priority of Democrats this week? Stopping the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. Their only slim hope was to generate momentum in the court of public opinion in their direct questioning of him in the second day of the hearings. The Times op-ed blew the Kavanaugh hearings off the lede of the evening news and above-the-fold in the morning papers. I see this morning that the op-ed is the story of the day. Senate Democrats can’t be pleased with this.

Second, is there anything in this op-ed that isn’t aligned with the sensational parts of the Woodward book that is out this week? Is this a pure coincidence? Doesn’t the coincident appearance of these two media sensations cancel each other out to a certain extent? (Note especially that about the only detailed example given in the article was Trump’s resistance to new Russia sanctions, which was widely reported last year.) At the very least, the op-ed follows the old PR adage of getting your bad news out all at once.

Finally, ask yourself the classic question, cui bono? Who benefits from this story inside the White House? Certainly not the “cabal” of “steady state” patriots keeping Trump from being Trump. It’s almost certainly going to strengthen the hand of the populist MAGA faction. Trump now has hard evidence of the tic-like nature of the “deep state.” If Steve Bannon was still in the White House, I’d almost suspect him of being the author, or his protege Steven Miller, who still is there. Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law thinks much the same thing, as explained in this Tweet thread. The article justifies a purge much more than responding to the Woodward book whose contents the White House is claiming is wrong. Neat trick, no?

I have no idea who the author is. (Jim Geraghty makes a good case for Jon Huntsman.) I have a couple of guesses, but they are only guesses, and it is possible—likely in fact—that the author, if genuine, wrote the piece with bread crumbs leading off the trail to distract us from figuring out the authorship through textual analysis. (That’s how Joe Klein was ultimately exposed as the “anonymous” author of Primary Colors back in 1992.) I wonder whether the author is in fact a “high-level” Obama holdover. I doubt the article is a Times‘ fake.

* Here’s what I wrote about Darman in The Age of Reagan, vol. 2:

To his many critics, he was the Rasputin of the Reagan administration.  Darman’s conservative critics joked: “Why do people take an instant dislike to Darman?” Answer: “It saves time.” Darman’s memoir, Who’s In Control?, offers ironic and unintentionally comic confirmation of his lack of sympathy with Reagan’s views and purposes.  “[W]hat was I doing among the would-be bronc-busters? . . . I was still very much imbued with the spirit of the Kennedy era.” Not a good sign.

“This much is true,” Darman writes by way of introducing his tergiversations from Reaganism; “America is naturally progressive”—a code phrase for saying America is naturally liberal. “And more simply,” he added, “it was unclear whether ‘big government’ had really grown so big.  It depended on how one measured. . . [I]t was new to me to find ideology to be the driving force for so many Reaganauts.”  He deprecated the talk of a “Reagan revolution,” adding that “I had some doubts whether the incoming Reaganauts would even be able to get effective hold of government,” a statement that by itself should have opened Darman’s eyes about whether government had grown too big and the need for some kind of political revolution. 

“Such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone.”  (Henry IV, Part 2, li. 70.)