Cowards Way Out

Finally, the Book

John Bolton has written his book.  He is telling us all of the things we thought we knew: that Trump would do anything to get re-elected, including the impeachment offense of withholding funds from Ukraine until they “got the dirt” on Biden.  Bolton added that Trump flat-out asked China to buy more agriculture products so he could be re-elected. He shopped American funds to foreign leaders to gain advantage in the election, and openly invited their intervention into the electoral process.

Bolton laid out all of this and more in his book, five months after the impeachment trial ended in the Senate.  It’s like a witness to the Brown/Goldman murders coming forward and saying that they saw OJ do it with the knife and wearing the gloves and shoes, right after the trial ended.  It’s salacious, and it will definitely sell. To use an old phrase, “Inquiring minds want to know”.  I want to know, and as loath as I am to donate to the “Bolton Fund,” we’ll have a copy here at the house soon.

Sales Pitch

The White House is doing everything it can to increase book sales.   It’s not intentional, but the President has tasked the Justice Department to find a way to bring charges against Bolton, and to somehow stop the book publication.  But the book is already out there, in the hands of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media.  The proverbial “barn door” is wide open; no judge will want to look foolish enough to try to close it with the horses already gone.  All the legal hoopla will just drive the book farther up the New York Times bestseller list.

Bolton flirted with testifying to the Senate during the impeachment trial. He even leaked out some of the Trump’s more significant transgressions.  Yet he never took the unalterable step of publicly saying what happened, in fact; he didn’t do so until the publicity tour started this week. He’s been a masterful salesman, keeping public interest high and bringing the book now, when all of the investigations have quieted in the Congress and he can have center-stage all to himself.

Staying in Power

But with all Bolton’s talk about what the President did, it certainly seems he’s took the coward’s way out. 

John Bolton is a Republican.  While even some other Republicans see him as an outlier, willing to take the Neo-Con ideology to extremes, he still is an “establishment” member of the Party.  And John Bolton runs a political action committee that supports many Republican candidates, gaining financial influence over those new legislators.  He wanted into the Trump Administration early, but it took almost two years and the firing of Generals Michael Flynn and HR McMaster for him to finally be invited to the National Security Advisor role.  He almost shaved his trademark mustache; it was rumored that Mr. Trump didn’t like it.

Bolton claims the President not only wanted help from foreign leaders to win re-election, he also states the President obstructed justice, and was incompetent in leading the nation.  And yet Bolton served silently on as the National Security Advisor for seventeen months.  Instead of stepping forward and letting the Congress, and the American people hear what was going on, he joined the ranks of “Anonymous” and others in enabling a failed leader.  

Oh, he covered his “ass”.  When his subordinates asked what they should do about “Giuliani’s Drug Deal” and Sunderland’s back room negotiations, he told them to “go to the lawyers”.  He wanted no part of that; though he left those same subordinates “holding the bag” in front of the House Intelligence Committee.  Vindman, Morrison and Hill all took the heat from the Committee and the President for telling the truth.  Bolton hid behind a façade of getting “legal permission” from the courts.

Patriot

A patriot would have resigned and made it clear why.  General Mattis followed that path, when the President’s actions went beyond “the pale”.  But Bolton, like so many others, stayed and enabled the disaster that is the Trump Administration. Now he hopes to profit from it.  

He sits righteously on Face the Nation and tells his story.  He lays out a chilling tale of a President incompetent, ignorant and egocentric.  We will have the opportunity to hear it again and again in the next few weeks.

What’s Good for Bolton

Bolton has it figured out.  He could have told his story in January, and the Senate would have been forced to listen.  But he counted the votes, and didn’t see a way that the Republican Senators would be convinced to remove the President.  So, rather than face banishment from his political power base, he simply hinted his story, then let the GOP Senators make the choice.  Call him, sure he would testify.  But Senators wanted cover:  they didn’t want to hear Bolton’s story. That made exonerating Trump’s actions easier – and Bolton could accommodate that.

And if he waited to publish the book later, say in September or early October:  well then he be accused of singlehandedly trying to alter the election.  Instead, it’s now, in June, when there’s plenty of time for the Trump misinformation machine to paper over the mess.  So here comes the book, and here comes the truth of the Impeachment charges.  Bolton gets to keep his profit, and his power. 

Is it good for the Nation?  In an election where about eleven percent or less will decide who the next President will be, everything counts.  So, yes, Bolton’s story is still important.  But Bolton should get no “points” for courage.  That opportunity passed six months ago. 

It’s all about profit now.