Nonsense--Not Acidental, But Deliberate

I suggested the other day that a lodestone of this personalist presidential administration is its historically familiar requirement of self-abasement: what better way to ensure the non-interference of principled and professional individuals, the kinds who gummed up the works last time, than to require anyone seeking an executive position to engage in a ritual act of self-humiliation--to deny one's own principles, the evidence of one's own eyes, and one's own good name? To be sure, there are committed ideologues and partisans seeded among the riffraff. But, apart from the fact that to think of Trump himself as an ideologue or partisan is to make a category mistake, partisanship and ideology are insufficient safeguards against the possibility that an individual might find in those beliefs something that transcends personal loyalty--not to the president as an officeholder or the presidency as an institution, but to the man himself. Ideologues and partisans may turn out to have character. Mandatory public self-abasement is the best way to weed out such people.   

Today's ongoing news about the Eric Adams transaction offers further evidence. The appearance of Mayor Eric Adams with Thomas Homan is Exhibit A. The appearance was not incidental; it was the point. That point was beautifully captured--again, in words with a remarkably apt historical resonance--by Adams's awkward silence and apt self-description: "I'm collaborating." (Truer words....) And it was underscored by Homan's suggestion that if Adams "doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City,...in his office, up his butt, saying where the hell is the agreement we came to?" (I understand that confusing vulgarity with fortitude and energy is a bipartisan failing in a country that rejects dignity and tradition. I enjoy being vulgar myself, outside of the classroom. But I expect high officials to avoid it, even in an administration whose chief figure is famed as a short-fingered vulgarian.)

Recall that the president's* two stated excuses for wanting to dismiss the Adams indictment were that the timing of the indictment was improper, including its proximity to the primary and general elections, and that the indictment would interfere with Adams's support of the administration's immigration policies. Each was described as an independent justification. Neither was said to indicate any conclusions concerning Adams's guilt or innocence or the strength of the case against him.

How do Homan's words comport with these justifications? They strongly suggest two things. They suggest that the talk of interfering with the timing of the elections was the sheerest nonsense, since Homan's threat indicates that the administration will let the sword fall at a time of its own choosing, quite regardless of that timing. And they suggest that the president's argument* that there was an appearance of impropriety in prosecution because Adams criticized the Biden administration's immigration policies shortly before the indictment (but long after the commencement of the rigorously monitored investigation) are also nonsense. This administration has promised, in almost as many words, that it will refile charges against Adams (who it has not said is innocent) precisely if and when it is unhappy with him. This is not even the appearance of impropriety, but its very definition. A passage from Bolt's A Man For All Seasons springs to mind--one of many that do these days, actually, this one quite frequently: "MORE: You threaten like a dockside bully. CROMWELL: How should I threaten? MORE: Like a minister of state, with justice!"      

It is not surprising that I have seen no defenses of the administration's actions or the president's arguments by any lawyer who is even marginally fit for the profession. Those arguments are transparently poor. And that is not an accident, but the point. Adams labeling himself a collaborator, Homan indicating that he doesn't take the stated reasons for wanting to dismiss the indictment at all seriously as justifications for this transaction with the president, and the embarrassing lack of seriousness of those reasons (especially the president's follow-up letter* accepting Danielle Sassoon's resignation) would not serve their deeper function if they were not facially absurd and humiliating to those offering them (assuming a lack of ignorance and the capacity for shame) and publicly offered. A serious effort might indicate the belief that a serious effort is called for, and that a proper counter-argument might change one's mind despite the presidential will. Obviously the justifications and arguments are lies, marginal fig leaves for a corrupt deal. But the important thing is that they be visibly bad ones. Anything else would be contrary to personalist administration, both because a proper effort at justification would imply that the president cannot do as he wishes, and because they would not provide the requisite element of self-abasement on the part of the people offering them. This administration's fundamental approach to securing the personal loyalty of its officials it to require that they behave in a way that leaves them fit for no further decent use elsewhere. And advertising the fact that unfitness and unseriousness are job requirements for service in the administration helps winnow the pile of resumes. Every administration has its share of individuals who are vice-ridden, casual or contemptuous of the truth, lacking in character, dishonest, care too much about their own skin, curry favor, flatter like sycophants, and, yes, have the personality of dockside bullies. What is unusual is the structuring of an entire administration to make this a feature, not a bug.  

* Technically, some of these arguments were not made by the president himself, but by underlings like Emil Bove. It seems fitting to attribute his words, and Homan's to the president directly, since the indivisibility of this executive branch is its basic position. Trump's own statement that he "know[s] nothing about the individual case," which is also probably a lie, are irrelevant.