https://www.nysun.com/editorials/general-mattis-finest-hour/90818/
That James Mattis is a tough man, we have no doubt. He is, after all, a Marine. He’s been decorated for the kind of valor it’s impossible to alloy. The question is whether he’ll prove tough enough to withstand the pressure to jump into the 2020 election campaign not as a candidate but as a critic of the commander in chief he served as secretary of defense. It seems the pressure is mounting with every passing day.
This is owing to the general’s new book, “Call Sign Chaos.” It’s out today from Random House. The book is about learning to lead. It’s a riveting read, in our view. Yet the general stops short of crabbing about the president he served and on whom he finally quit. As near as we can count, it mentions President Trump but four times — in the prologue, which offers a brief description of his job interview for secretary.
Such reticence is driving our best newspapermen crazy. The editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, traveled all the way to the state of Washington for one of his famous scoop-interviews. He went for a walk with the general along the Columbia River. They talked about fishing, command-and-feedback loops, the fragility of the American experiment, even Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the famed stoic.
About President Trump, though, zilch. On the question about which Mr. Goldberg wanted to hear — “Is Donald Trump fit for command?” — the general clammed up tighter than one the Columbia’s notorious mollusks. Mr. Goldberg himself found it “exasperating.” The general wouldn’t budge. “There is a period in which I owe my silence,” the general said, though he added: “It’s not eternal.”