Tuesday
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus uses Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons to interpret former chief of staff General John Kelly’s silence following Donald Trump’s reported contempt for the military. While problems exist with her application, she still opens up an interesting discussion about the meaning of silence.
In case you haven’t been following what’s going on, here’s her summation:
The former White House chief of staff has remained quiet in the face of Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s report about Trump’s scornful comments about service members as “losers” and “suckers” — including Kelly’s son, killed in the line of duty.
Kelly is no Trump fan, not in the wake of his unceremonious firing and Trump’s derisive assessment. (“He got eaten alive,” Trump said Friday, suggesting Kelly might be a Goldberg source. “He was unable to handle the pressure of this job.”)
But does anyone beyond the most reflexive Trump supporter really believe that a career Marine, a four-star general, a Gold Star father, would invent such a story — however it managed to make its way to Goldberg? Goldberg describes Trump’s visit with Kelly to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017. They stood at the grave of Kelly’s son Robert, killed at 29 in Afghanistan when he stepped on a landmine leading a platoon of Marines. “Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, ‘I don’t get it. What was in it for them?’” Goldberg writes.
Marcus uses the play to understand strategic silence:
Law students learn in their first-year contracts class that silence does not connote acceptance. (Except, of course, when it does; what would law be if not for loopholes?) Yet what may be a correct statement of law is not an accurate reflection of reality. In the Robert Bolt play A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell debate the various forms of silence and its significance — specifically, More’s silence on the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s marriage. Cromwell argues that More’s refusal to speak up “betokened” his disagreement with the king’s action; More, rather duplicitously, that his silence should be taken to indicate consent.
“Is that in fact what the world construes from it?” Cromwell asks him. “Do you pretend that is what you wish the world to construe from it?”
More responds, “The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law.”
The two cases aren’t entirely parallel in that More faces far more dire consequences than Kelly if he counters his leader. While Marcus says that his silence is duplicitous, the chancellor is between a rock and a hard place. No religious justification exists for annulling Henry’s marriage to his first wife, but to say so will lead to his execution.
Silence gets More only so far, however. In the end, he must choose to support or oppose Henry’s will. With no middle ground available, he chooses principle over expedience.
Marcus says that the world “must construe [Kelly’s] silence according to its wits, and judge Trump accordingly.” In other words, we can feel free to believe the story. In any event, Kelly’s testimony is not all that necessary since there are multiple sources confirming the account.
More at least has an excuse for his silence whereas Kelly would lose little by coming out. Since Trump, assuming him to be the source, has been blackening his name for a while, why not speak out?
Kelly resembles More in another way. Apparently Trump offered him head of the FBI if he would do what James Comey would not, which is swear fealty to the president. Kelly lost the post when he replied that his first loyalty was to the Constitution and the rule of law.
The silence Marcus mentions sounds more like the public silence we’re getting from those Republicans who privately grumble about Trump while toeing the Trump line. (I’ve applied Bolt’s play to them over the behavior in the impeachment trial.) Unable to defend or to criticize, they just say nothing.
They should learn from Man for All Seasons that silence will not necessarily save them. If the choice is between Trump’s chopping block and the electorate’s, you might as well choose principle.