John Bolton reveals the problem with 'intellectual Trumpism'

Washington Post:

Mr. Trump said so many things that were wrong or false that Mr. Bolton in the book regularly includes phrases like “(the opposite of the truth)” following some quote from the president. And Mr. Trump in this telling has no overarching philosophy of governance or foreign policy but rather a series of gut-driven instincts that sometimes mirrored Mr. Bolton’s but other times were, in his view, dangerous and reckless.

“His thinking was like an archipelago of dots (like individual real estate deals), leaving the rest of us to discern — or create — policy,” Mr. Bolton writes. “That had its pros and cons.”

This has been obvious for some time - Trumpism is Trump - but that hasn't prevented a cottage industry of writers like Henry Olsen and Victor Davis Hanson or pretty much anybody on the roster of the Claremont Institute to offer an intellectual sheen and overarching consistency to the president's lurching from one crisis to the next. Some of this is to give something undeserving of respect a respectability, but I think some of it is also an effort to steer Trumpism for their own desires. The former effort is spin at best, a lie at worst. The latter effort is probably a doomed project - Trump will be Trump, and if he decides its in his interest to dump his putative allies and propagandists to adopt a different agenda, he most certainly will.