The practice of top aides cashing in by disclosing details of their presidential bosses' inadequacies while they are still in office has been a common Washington phenomenon for more than four decades.
Jim Fallows had no sooner stopped writing presidential speeches for Jimmy Carter than he reported the president was such a micromanager he personally assigned use of the White House tennis courts. Press Secretary Scott McClellan said President George W. Bush was not "open and forthright" in selling the 2003 invasion of Iraq. George Stephanopoulos groused that Bill Clinton often spurned his obviously superior advice.
The disclosures were often more trivial than substantive. But that hardly makes the practice less detestable when authors claim, like former national security adviser John Bolton, that their higher purpose is to enlighten the public on the dangers of re-electing a president so inadequate as Donald Trump.
What gives Bolton's 592-page volume its essential credibility is that he provides anecdotal evidence that matches the earlier conclusions on Trump from such highly regarded former officials as Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Gen. James Allen, Trump's second White House chief of staff.
Among them:
* Tillerson's oft-quoted description that Trump is an "(expletive) moron" is validated by notations Trump thought that Finland was part of Russia and didn't realize our closest global ally, the United Kingdom, is a nuclear power.
* Suggestions Trump puts his family's reputation over the country's comes in his willingness to float a false story justifying Saudi Arabia's brutal murder of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi to deflect attention from reports his daughter Ivanka used her private email account while a top White House aide, akin to the Hillary Clinton misdeed he condemned in 2016 as almost a mortal sin.
* Bolton confirms details of Trump's "perfect" phone call with Ukraine's president in which Trump threatened to withhold U.S. aid to pressure the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden. Bolton notes the president made an even more blatant plea for help for his 2020 reelection campaign from China's Xi.
It's part of a pattern. A bipartisan Senate committee report concluded Russia helped Trump in 2016. And Trump told ABC's Stephanopoulos in 2019 "I think I'd take" campaign aid from a foreign government, likening it to domestic "oppo research."
Bolton's book and especially its timing have placed the veteran diplomatic official squarely in the political crossfire from both sides.
The Trump White House launched a belated legal action to squash publication on grounds Bolton was violating national security.
Meanwhile, Democrats groused about Bolton's disinterest in testifying during last fall's House impeachment hearings, which he readily could have done, while saying he would respect a Senate subpoena that was far less likely.
Bolton argues that House Democrats committed "impeachment malpractice" by not broadening their probe from Ukraine.
While rejecting the administration's effort to block publication, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Bolton "has gambled with the national security of the United States ... [and] has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil [and potentially criminal] liability."
McClellan, the ex-Bush press secretary, never held another fulltime Washington job and relied on consulting contracts and paid speeches in the years after writing "Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." Since 2012, he has been vice president for communications at Seattle University, in Washington state.
Stephanopoulos, however, landed a lush television contract with ABC News. More than two decades later, it continues to pay him $14 million annually.
The Dallas Morning News