Of course, what if the NYT mystery op-ed author isn't a cowardly wanker? What if they're...?

Every day it's something else with these people.  In the midst of the show hearings for Kavanaugh's appointment to Neil Gorsuch's seat on the Supreme Court (Mr. Justice Gorsuch sitting in The Honorable Merrick Garland's stolen seat on the bench; illegitimacy begets illegitimacy), we have the whole slobbery mess of the New York Times publishing an "op-ed" by an anonymous tipster¹ in the White House who wants to reassure us that everything is alright, the reins of government have been taken over by an unelected, unaccountable, unidentified cabal of government officials who are sabotaging the mentally and temperamentally unfit Occupant-In-Chief any time he tries to do something that's too stupid or awful.

No, nothing wrong with that.

The alleged situation isn't without antecedents in the modern presidency.²  The most infamous is the (sometimes contested) claim that Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, was so concerned by Nixon's deteriorating mental state during Nixon's second term that he issued a directive to the military that if the President tried to give any orders involving the use of nuclear weapons, those orders should not be acted upon without verification/being seconded by Schlesinger or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  Which, on the one hand, you're, like, "Hooray, no nuclear war!" and on the other hand are like, "Holy shitfuck, so if Schlesinger is telling the truth, Nixon's cabinet attempted a 'soft coup' by removing the Commander In Chief from command."

You also have the (also contested) claim that Ronald Reagan's mental state decayed during his second term, a consequence of incipient dementia or Alzheimer's Disease, and that the Reagan cabinet basically took charge of the Executive Branch on Reagan's bad days.  Which, again, here you have on the one hand, "Hooray, the resiliency of the American system is that it can barrel on even when the President is effectively incapacitated" and on the other hand, "Fuck me, this is how Iran-Contra happened, not to mention another 'soft coup' [we're going to be using that expression a lot] where the reins of government are secretly seized by an unelected cabal."

The author of the piece the Times published, if she or he is telling the truth about how our government is working, is probably a cowardly wanker who is freely admitting that instead of trying to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment or go through Congress, members of the staff and/or cabinet have simply decided to run America's democracy without the President.  On the one hand, it ought to be reassuring that the nincompoop who stumbled into the highest office in the land through a perfect storm of luck and incompetence with a crosswind of voter suppression and foreign interference isn't being allowed near anything breakable.  On the other hand, it totally isn't.  This isn't how our country is supposed to work, with secret cliques subverting the Executive, whether for a perceived greater good or not.  

I say "probably" only because this is if you take the Times piece at face value.  But what if you want to be seedy and paranoid?  Let's be paranoid for fun and giggles!  Yes, let's!

Because there is another possibility, which is that the Times piece is a bit of ratfucking chicanery, political sabotage.  There's a new parlor game being played here and there of trying to figure out who wrote the damn thing, and there are two suspects who stand out.

One of them mentioned by the New York Magazine "Daily Intelligencer" piece linked to in the previous paragraph is professional asshat Stephen Miller, who seems perfectly capable of borrowing idioms from his colleagues while penning a piece in the hope of framing them.  But this isn't the most interesting, most paranoid, most disturbing suspect.

Let's talk about a harder kind of coup.

Let's talk about the observation that's been made here and there that some phrases in the NYT piece, particularly the use of the word "lodestone," suggest Vice-President Mike Pence as the author.  Mike Pence, weasel.  Mike Pence, the first VP in history to start his own political action committee, ostensibly to support Trump-leaning downballot candidates, but everyone kind of thinks he's positioning himself for his own Presidential bid, his unconvincing denials notwithstanding.

One might imagine Mike Pence considering the Twenty-Fifth Amendment option for removing Trump from office to be suboptimal.  For one thing, he might not have the support of enough cabinet officials; for another, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment wouldn't remove Trump from office, it would merely temporarily make Pence Acting President until Congress settled the issue of whether Trump was really incapable of performing his duties.  And it seems rather likely that making a 25A push would alienate Pence from a significant number of Trump's true believers, the MAGA crowd who would see it as a "deep state" driven power grab.

Crippling Trump, on the other hand, might be well to Pence's advantage.  Creating a scenario where Congress is pressured to look into Trump's capacity, for instance, or laying the groundwork for Congress to do so in anticipation of a "blue wave" in 2018.  Creating an atmosphere where Trump might be pressured to resign, making Pence the President-in-fact and not merely the Acting President, and setting Pence up to run as an incumbent in 2020.  Or damaging Trump to a point that running against him in the primaries might be seen by many within the Republican party as being a duty for Pence, an unfortunate but wholly necessary obligation.

And best of all?  Pence's fingerprints aren't on the murder weapon.  Who, me?  These leaking staffers just wouldn't stop leaking, the bunch of finks and rat bastards!  I was loyal, boss; I never lost faith.  If things go amuck, Mike Pence has deniability.  If things go per plan, Mike Pence has clean hands.

Am I suggesting that Mike Pence is the author of the Times piece?  Well, first: I'm only wondering aloud and I have no idea whether I believe any of it; it's not implausible and it's one of the reasons the piece shouldn't have been published.  

But second: taking the hypothesis seriously, this question is a "Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare's plays?" sort of question.  If Pence had any authorial hand in the piece, I don't think he called up the Times and said he had an anonymous op-ed he wanted to run in which he claimed he was secretly running the government behind the President's back.  For one thing, I think at that point even the Times would have said there was something hinky about the Vice-President writing this thing and trying to get it published.  For another, that would totally undermine the idea of having plausible deniability for this particular bit of espionage.  No, if the Veep had a hand in this, of course he used a cut-out, someone loyal to Pence and a source trusted by the New York Times who could take credit for the thing.

So what if the Times author isn't a cowardly wanker?  What if he's a treacherous, ratfucking, politically astute shithead who's cleverly playing the Times and the general public (and the left in particular)?  What if this is a savvy ploy to cripple the useless ass of a President to the advantage of someone more nefarious?

Where does that leave us?

Just something to think about.

If you want to be a little paranoid about it.

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¹I'm intentionally not linking directly to the NYT piece.  For one thing, if you're not a subscriber it's behind a paywall (I think).  For another, and the main thing, even though I am a subscriber to the NYT, their decision to run this piece has me really feeling like "Fuck these guys," because I really do think this is lousy and irresponsible of them and unconscionable of their source.  And links to First Draft are always worthy: you should be subscribing to them anyway and if you aren't, this is your chance to head over there.

²Basically the post-WWII era?  Though some might define the "modern presidency" more narrowly to reflect the "imperial presidency" era that began to develop in the late '60s to mid '70s where Congress increasingly delegated (or abrogated) constitutional allocation and oversight activities to the Executive Branch.  Either way, we're confining ourselves to that because you could also go back to the Wilson Administration being run by Edith Wilson (his wife) and Wilson's cabinet after Wilson's stroke, and maybe further back if there's something I'm forgetting about right now.