Trump embraces White House chaos: Kennedy
The word of the week is chaos. There has to be a way to quickly sum up and market the president's inadequacies, and with high staff turnover and garden variety instability, chaos is the new collusion.
The president goes back and forth on the word, sometimes he admits to thriving on chaos, and other days he rebrands it "great energy.” It's obviously not great for the White House communications director, because that is a shift that can't stay filled.
It's impossible to surf chaotic waves when the boss wants to be the big kahuna on messaging, and changes course and gets pulled off message in one fell tweet.
With the media focused on scandals and palace intrigue, it's easy to see how burnout sets in. The question isn't whether or not the White House is chaotic, that's a given. It's not even how do administration-goers deal with it. That's their job, and when they get sick of the grind, they take a powder. The real question is whether or not it's good for the country.
The president's supporters say look at unemployment numbers, the tax cuts and the decimation of ISIS, and that's your answer. The president is a swamp-draining, promise-keeping, feud-starting disruptor who works best in a circus and if the country is working, the haters can suck it.
Detractors point to his instability on issues like gun control, his thin skin and ill-advised rants against the Mueller investigation. They see high turnover as a result of an administration that's either too lazy or too compromised to properly vet employees, and those who are qualified for the jobs wouldn't take them for all the borscht in mother Russia.
There is one fact the left isn't willing to concede. They would hate it if the White House were calm and normal and the president polite and predictable. They would lose their minds if they weren't led into a Twitter war and shown exact outrage. The great unknown is how this all ends, and chaos is the distraction that makes us aware it could go either way at any moment.