Will Kelly Last Longer Than Scaramucci?

John F. Kelly’s front-stabbing Donald Trump ’s new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci only hours after Trump named the four-star Marine general his chief of staff was a sublime first move. But unlike Ivanka or Jared Kushner , Trump isn’t dad to Kelly. How long can it be before Kelly’s service doesn’t pleasure the president anymore?

Kelly is a patriot and an honorable man. Yes, Ive opposed some of the Trump administration policies Kelly has carried out as homeland security secretary, like the Muslim travel ban and the reranking of deportation priorities to include offenses like DUIs, but I opposed some of Barack Obama s deportation policies, too. What I fault Kellys Cabinet stint for is enforcement rigidity, not xenophobia, demagoguery or constitutional recklessness.

But President Donald Trump is a poster boy for those failings, a hothead who fouls his office, flouts the law and endangers our nation. Duty may have motivated Kelly to say yes to Trumps West Wing summons, but hes about to find that deceit, disarray and derangement are daily specials at the White House mess.

Kellys patriotism inevitably will come into conflict with Trumps narcissism. His loyalty to country will be tested by the fools hell have to suffer, the lies hell have to defend and the monarch hell soon discover is mad. Not angry mad, though Trump is that, too, but mad mad, King George mad, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders mad.

I have to believe that Kelly has a tipping point, and that resignation on principle is an option hed consider. By principle, I dont mean what forced Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus off the island: losing a cockfight to Scaramucci. I mean what Trumps national security adviser, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, wrote about in Dereliction of Duty: the crime of enabling a president to con the country. That book is about the complicity in high places that mired us in war in Vietnam, but its equally relevant to our current quagmire. It may be too much to dream that one fine day, McMaster and Kelly, disgusted by their boss, will walk, but it just may take something that big to awaken some more grown-ups in Trumps party to their responsibility.

We could use more loyalty, Ill tell you that, Trump told the Boy Scout Jamboree on July 24, in between inviting the Scouts to boo Barack Obama, boo Hillary Clinton and imagine the sexual opportunities a multimillionaires yacht could provide. You might think Attorney General Jeff Sessions the first sitting U.S. senator to endorse him could be called a Trump loyalist, but when Sessions refused Trumps demand to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating him, Trump redefined the L word. He was a senator, Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week. He looks at 40,000 people [at campaign rallies] and he probably says, What do I have to lose? And he endorsed me. So its not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement.

When Trump says loyalty, he means what he demanded from FBI Director James Comey: not a pledge of allegiance to the rule of law, but an oath of omerta to the Don. When Comey broke that oath he refused to kill the FBIs probe of former national security adviser Michael Flynns ties to Russia Trump fired Comey. Kelly has to know its only a matter of time until Trump tests him thuggishly, too.

When that happens, another former military man, Sen. John McCain, might inspire Kellys next move. I hope Kelly doesnt mirror the McCain, who endorsed Trump in the Arizona primary to save his own political skin, even after Trump said McCain was not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured. (Trump didnt add that McCain putting loyalty to his fellow POWs ahead of his own freedom refused early release from the North Vietnamese because his father was an admiral). Instead, I hope Kelly emulates the McCain who, together with Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski no matter how hard Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump banged the hammer of Republican loyalty voted a disgraceful health care bill down to defeat.

When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who replaced Spicer as press secretary, was asked whether Sessions was on his way out, she replied with a common phrase about political appointees: We all serve at the pleasure of the president. Sessions, who was traveling to El Salvador while Scaramucci was trashing Steve Bannon in anatomically taxing terms, used the same words Sanders did when an AP reporter asked if he were going to quit: I serve at the pleasure of the president.

Two things about that idiom give me the willies. One is its feudal echo of fealty pledges. I am your obedient servant, mlord. My loyalty is unwavering. Do with me as you wish. Something more like at-will employee is better suited to a democracy. It conveys the idea they dont need a substantive reason to let me go but without the crypto-royalist servility.

The other thing about serving at the pleasure of the president, which didnt give me the creeps until the present president, is its whiff of sadomasochism. Trump gets pleasure from humiliating people. Bullying turns him on. And his victims get off on their bondage. Sure, if you get power, you cling to it. But ambition alone cant explain Spicers appetite for daily mortification, or the pornography of Scaramuccis Trump-worship.

Trump has made loyalty kinky. That could be cool on Craigslist, and it may fly at Trump Tower, but the last time I looked, theres no S&M in POTUS.

This is a crosspost of my column in the Jewish Journal , where you can reach me if youd like at martyk@jewishjournal.com.