The Room Where It Happened, Chapter 1

Finally back to blog!

In the interests of reading this so other don't have to, here we go with John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened. In this series I will post my thoughts and reactions to reading the formal National Security Advisor's memoir of his time in the Trump White House. Naturally, I have a great number of thoughts on JB and his mustache, but I'll get to those after the focus on the book itself. Dig in to chapter 1!

Chapter 1: "The Long March to a West Wing Corner Office" (or "Let Me Tell You Why I, John Bolton, am such an astute and amazing fellow!")

The first chapter of the book deals basically with the preamble to Bolton becoming the NSA. For my purposes, this section of the book wanders around three basic threads:

1. Bolton confirming what any modestly-informed follower of American politics suspects: that Trump and his campaign/administration were woefully unprepared to win the election and to understand how the government works in general and frankly what the office of the President of the United States is for and how it needs to be run. As someone with experience in several past administrations, he does provide a bit more nuance and insight into the chaos, but nothing particularly interesting or ground-breaking. Like anyone of average logical reasoning abilities, he notes with concern the lack of thought process and stability in the hiring and firing of cabinet officials. He briefly touches on a few of the problems of different secretaries and officials (e.g., Rex Tillerson), but not in enough detail to be worthwhile. 

2. Bolton telling the reader how great and influential a person he is. I'm pretty sure that all of you are quite aware of Bolton's...characteristic lack of humility in all things, especially as they relate to himself. I mean, the very nature of publishing this book but not testifying in the impeachment proceedings exemplifies his commitment to self-serving. So naturally, this chapter simply can be seen as a natural extension of that character trait. Bolton annoyingly name drops world leaders and former US officials like a the metaphorical trail of bread crumbs he will no doubt later take up to extricate himself out of the dubious decision to take the job. He makes sure that the reader knows how much stock everyone put in his op-eds and the like. To be fair, I am not going to fault Bolton for only wanting a top job in the administration (Secretary of State or National Security Advisor); there is certainly no sense in taking a job that you have no interest in (and, as he argues in the chapter, many of these other jobs, especially the nepotistic "special advisor to the president" positions, would mostly serve as just another "big name" that the administration would use to defend Trump's foolishness on television).

3. Bolton's tedious prose. Look, obviously no one is going to read this book because they think he's some sort of literary genius; however, he certainly hangs on to amateurish tendencies that I try to steer my high school students from indulging in. As I noted earlier, he does love to name drop, but what he enjoys even more than that is the classic "INSERT QUOTE BY GREAT MAN HERE" pattern of writing. We get it, you've read a few books over the course of a lifetime. He also has fun with sophomoric strategies including literally writing this line: "Was I right? Read on" (Bolton 35). It mostly seems like he is trying and failing at finding a balance between dry recitation of the facts and an interesting, thoughtful narrative. On the other hand, I did appreciate several mustache references in the chapter.

Ostensibly, the purpose of chapter 1 is twofold: establishing a. Bolton's bona fides as an arch conservative policy hawk and b. the Trump administration's severe dysfunction (even before he joined it). He attempts (weakly) to argue that the massive problems were not completely obvious until after he took the job, but...c'mon now...

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