The ‘anonymous official op-ed’ is less than it seems

The op-ed by the anonymous author in the New York Times is being celebrated in anti-Trump salons and saloons, but you can’t have a summer party without a skunk. I happily volunteer.

Despite claims from the usual suspects that the piece from a “senior official” in the administration proves the sky really is falling this time, my reaction is that the author is too taken with himself to be taken too seriously. Like Sen. Cory Booker declaring that he is having his “Spartacus moment” by releasing documents already cleared for release, the author seems to be scoping out a spot on Mount Rushmore — despite refusing to identify himself. It’s going to be hard to chisel his likeness.

And when he ranks himself among the “adults” and “unsung heroes” who are thwarting the elected president, I do not have visions of patriots serving their country with honor. Instead, I get a flashback to another case of hubris.

“As of now, I’m in control here, in the White House,” a breathless Alexander Haig declared to reporters shortly after the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.

Though Haig, a former top military man, was secretary of state at the time, his assertion was met with a mixture of ridicule and alarm. Was he an idiot, or was he announcing a coup?

Neither, it was just a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong in front of TV cameras while a nation sat on edge. Haig at least meant well.

The sneaky author of the Times piece deserves no benefit of the doubt. Because he refuses to attach his name or position, we have no idea what, if anything, is true. His claims are all unverifiable, and therefore unreliable.

He offers no examples with enough specificity that would enable others to corroborate what he says or judge the importance. In an utterly ridiculous sequence, he makes sweeping assertions about people throughout the government resisting Trump, then attempts to support the claim with a quote from another anonymous official!

In a convoluted and contradictory passage, he writes: “There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”

So in response to the coverage being too negative, the author piles on, as if that sets the record straight.

In the next sentence, he actually says the bright spots come despite Trump, not because of him. Nothing negative there.

This is not to deny the obvious: that Trump is a mercurial and impulsive person and no doubt a very difficult boss. The West Wing churn is testament enough and some of his angry tweet storms show a side of him most of us would rather not see.

But to act as if this piece provides a sensational load of new evidence about anything significant is ridiculous. It simply repeats the narrative established long ago by CNN, The Times and other leftist media — that Trump is unfit.

The author clearly doesn’t like the president and whines like a NeverTrump Republican. His snide remark that Trump has “little affinity” for traditional GOP ideas sounds like he misses the glory days of the Bush presidencies — a nostalgia that most Americans would find absurd.

Most important, he seems to have missed the point of the election when 63 million Americans voted for Trump precisely because he wasn’t like the Bushes or the typical politicians of both parties.

Those voters had the guts to take a chance on someone outside of politics because they believed America could do better. The author doesn’t say who he voted for, but it’s almost certainly Hillary Clinton. That should matter in this context.

Another thing that should matter is the decision of the Times to publish an anonymous op-ed. Not so long ago, the paper vowed to crack down on the use of anonymous sources in its news stories. The argument then and always was that it was wrong to let such people take a free shot at others without risk of rebuttal and also prevented readers from making judgments about veracity and motive.

But that was in the B.T. era — Before Trump. With editor Dean Baquet deciding that Trump was not deserving of traditional standards of fairness because he had to be blocked from becoming president, every story became an anti-Trump opinion piece.

Anonymous sources are now routine, and indeed many stories wouldn’t exist without them.

And now the unfair practice has migrated to the op-ed section. Bad ideas are contagious.

Indeed, what the paper has done here is eliminate all reporting and facts and hide behind a long and pejorative anonymous quote.

This isn’t journalism. It’s cowardice.