Who would replace John Bolton at USC? Kim Kardashian?

The people calling loudest for Trump to ditch Bolton aren't facing the reality that the bench he could choose from is very thin. Bolton was the last person Trump wanted running the security council but he finally had no other choice.  

The truth is that many Republicans view the Trump presidency as a fluke. They don't like his attempts to disengage the U.S. from what has become the traditional U.S. relationship with other nations and put the relationship on a more transactional, or at least less ideological, basis.

What's more, they don't think his views on such matters, and those who truly support them, will last 15 minutes in Washington after he leaves the White House. 

So people can grouse about Trump's use of his relatives to interface with foreign leaders -- consider this sour-grapes piece from yesterday's Washington Post on Ivanka Trump's portfolio -- but at least the relatives don't conspire with the Get Trump crowd in the GOP-controlled Senate or grandly ignore his instructions on foreign policy/defense matters. 

It's to be remembered that earlier this year Trump ordered the U.S. military to leave Syria and they went right on doing there what they wanted to do. Which, by the way, amounts largely to cooperating with jihadists in the effort to make as much trouble for Syria's government as possible. What was Trump supposed to do? Call for mutiny charges to be brought?

Would things change if Trump won a second term in office? The problem is that it's not only the bench that's thin, it's also the philosophical defense of Trump's views that continues to go begging in the mainstream Republican establishment.  Trump's frustration with the intellectual desert in his own political party often manifests in sarcasm and Twitter rants that play badly in the mainstream press, which influences so much of American public opinion.

The bottom line is that the status quo is deeply entrenched and has broad support in Washington's defense/foreign relations establishment. And Trump prefers the gesture, showmanship, to make his points rather than the lectern. It takes more than gestures and quips to persuade people who've thought the same way for a generation to turn away from a path that encourages constant conflicts that drain respect for the United States of America.

Thus, the limitations of a real-estate developer who tries to stage a revolution from within.     

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