The-Ave.US

Reince Preibus. John Kelly. Mick Mulvaney. And now Mark Meadows.

They’re like boxcars on a passing train.

The White House Chief of Staff “typically oversees the actions of the White House staff, manages the president’s schedule, and decides who is allowed to meet with the president,” according to Wikipedia. Obviously, it’s a key position; the CoS controls access to the president. And that can be pretty darn important during a crisis like we have now.

This changing of the gatekeeper may be a good thing or a bad thing. You can argue a crisis is a good time to bring in a new perspective — especially, you could argue, when the administration’s response to the crisis has been bumbling and mismanagement.

Or, it might just be further evidence of this administration’s instability, the paranoia of its leader, or a change in messaging without fundamentally changing anything else. That’s been typical of the Trump Administration so far, and it’s reasonable to suspect this is just more of the same.

Trump has been angry at Mulvaney ever since the latter publicly admitted last October there was a quid pro quo in Trump’s withholding of military aid from Ukraine in his quest for dirt against Joe Biden, who’s now his probable November opponent.

Meadows was a highly vocal defender of Trump in the impeachment proceedings that followed. And Trump treasures fealty and loyalty. Whether Meadows is competent for the tasks ahead probably has nothing to do with it.

In any case, this is a time when the United States needs leadership, and it would be hard to do worse than the administration’s track record so far in managing the coronavirus crisis. Let’s hope Meadows’ new job brief is to get Trump to listen to doctors and health experts, not shut them out of the White House. But I’m not holding my breath.