In John Bolton’s new “The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir,” there’s a telling moment in which Bolton, then President Donald J. Trump’s National Security Adviser, contrasts the reaction of the North Korean delegation with the American one after North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un signed an agreement with Trump in Singapore in 2018.
“The North Korean delegation was very impressive,” Bolton writes. “They all clapped in perfect unison, loud and hard, for example whenever Kim said or did anything noteworthy, which was quite a contrast with the raggedy performance of the U.S. delegation.”
It’s telling because the moment crystallizes the difference between a homogenous, authoritarian society in which agreeing with the dear leader may be a matter of life and death and a democratic republic like the United States where consensus building is like herding cats.
What’s really telling, however, is that Bolton fails to see the moment for what it is, an instance of the unbridgeable gulf between a closed society and an open one. But then Bolton, who seemed to prefer the North Koreans’ robotic performance, is a writer who cannot see the forest for the trees, — “the room where it happened,” as it were, for the White House — which makes what should be an entertaining book about a fascinating, much discussed subject a tough slog.
Indeed, Bolton is like a conscientious recorder of meeting minutes or one of those people who can remember every day of their lives. The problem with that is that if everything can be recorded or remembered, than nothing has any value. And so we get endless descriptions of discussions in White House hallways, offices and dining areas in which members of the Trump Administration say that Bolton must be part of the team. Yet if that was so, then why idid t take so long to bring him aboard, not until 2018, and why did he last for such a short time (17 months, albeit a lifetime for Trump appointees)?
Part of the reason for this — one inferred from what Bolton writes rather than from what he concludes — is the funhouse of refracted narcissism between Trump and his hawkish National Security Adviser, who spends much of the book patting himself on the back and finding fault with everyone from Trump to his cabinet to previous Democratic administrations. The clash of the titanic egos was inevitable. And Bolton seems to sense this.
But as with all egotists, Bolton is not big on self-awareness or extrapolating metaphors from details. If he were, he would see in the ragtag American response at the Jong-un-Trump summit a metaphor for our coronavirus response. With 2.74 million infections and 130,000 deaths — with a record-breaking 50,000 infections a day —it’s no longer cute or funny to say “don’t tread on me” when confronted with a mask. There is a moment when public safety trumps individual wants.
This is one such moment.