John Dean, Who Worked for Nixon, Sizes Up Trump.

[elleng]

'At a recent cocktail party in Manhattan, John Dean and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a zebra-print bench. Wherever Mr. Dean goes, talk of Watergate is never far behind, and Mr. Rushdie mentioned that he knew Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters whose investigative work at The Washington Post in the 1970s helped run President Richard M. Nixon out of office and get Mr. Dean sentenced to a jail term.

“We shared the same agent, David Obst,” Mr. Dean told Mr. Rushdie, recalling Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. “We had lunch together once. We went to a Chinese restaurant. Obst speaks Chinese and he wanted to order for us in Chinese. I don’t know if the waiter understood him.”

They laughed, and Mr. Rushdie asked Mr. Dean, a hotshot lawyer in his 30s when he worked in the Nixon White House, if he had known Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein back in those days.

“No,” Mr. Dean said. “I was never a source.” . .

“Presidents don’t give up powers once they get in there,” Mr. Dean said.

That is what troubles him about Mr. Trump and his political advisers, among them his chief political strategist, the media executive Stephen K. Bannon. “I’m not sure Trump, or Bannon, or whoever is guiding that place, has figured out all their powers,” he said. “The incompetence is the only thing giving me comfort at the moment.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/style/john-dean-richard-nixon-watergate-donald-trump.html?

[Warpy]

1. "The incompetence is the only thing giving me comfort at the moment"

Oh, yes, oh, yes.

I always wondered why anyone with Dean's intelligence would ally himself with Nixon and now I know--he'd been fairly young, idealistic, and completely star struck at Nixon's power. He'd risen from making his bones in Congress as a commie fighter to being Eisenhower's hatchet man and no one wanted to cross him.

At least we're in agreement at Asshole's incompetence and how protective some of it can be. As long as Congress restores some of his budget cut requests, we might all get through this one without blood in the streets.

Then again, if too many people tell the man-baby no, he's likely to pitch a fit and throw more bombs.

[yurbud]

2. my fear is incompetence won't matter if he gets with Washington consensus on wars

which is to have them until every country does what they are told by "our" bankers.