Good News/Bad News

Yesterday, Donald Trump abruptly fired John Bolton, his national security advisor and the third one who has served during the less-than-three years since he became President (details here).

This is a good news/bad news development. Bolton was an extreme hawk and a warmonger. It's good he's gone.

But.

The fact that Trump even picked such a bad fit in the first place shows he's not using a national security advisor effectively.

When it comes to defense, terrorism, and international relations, Trump thinks he's the smartest person in the room at all times. The opposite is true. He's ill informed, incurious, doesn't read, and intellectually lazy. He thinks he gets everything he needs to know from watching Fox News.

A national security advisor and his or her staff is meant to supply the expertise that a President lacks. In the roughly seventy years the United States has had a national security advisor, no President has needed one more than Trump. And no one has ignored one more than Trump.

The result is that the people with the right credentials for this job won't be willing to work for Trump. And instead the President will probably pick some third-string yes man or yes woman who will not confront him about topics for which he needs confrontation more than any other.

So the result will be more of the same -- a President who desperately needs to listen to his national security advisor and staff but who will continue to think he knows more than they do and just ignore them.

And he'll continue to be played by dictators and make horrendous decisions like he did by inviting the Taliban to Camp David. November 2020 can't get here soon enough.