"Mooching" the White House

Anthony Scaramucci is on his way back to the Export-Import Bank, having tendered his resignation as White House communications director, presumably (at this writing) at the request of the brand-new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly.

I have to step back a bit on this one.  I mean, you had to appreciate the bringing in of Scaramucci to the White House team as a loud, brash New Yorker in the mold of his boss, the president.

But the bigger issue is chain of command, and I'm trying to psych out what happened -- and I don't think it's that hard and I don't think it is particularly scandalous.  Remember that the sequence of events was that Scaramucci came in, then Sean Spicer resigned as spokesman, then Reince Priebus left as chief of staff, John Kelly came in as chief of staff, and Scaramucci went out.

The key is the reporting order and chain of command.

Scaramucci was reporting directly to the president, which bypassed Priebus and was likely OK with Priebus, at least somewhat.  That all blew up when it became obvious to Scaramucci that Priebus was a real problem as far as leaking, or allowing leaks, or tolerating them.  Scaramucci went to the President, and Priebus had to go.

But President Trump had wanted Gen. Kelly to come in and be the chief of staff, and a retired four-star Marine general was not going to have Anthony Scaramucci, in any capacity, not reporting through him.  That would violate every precept of chain-of-command, of course, and is perfectly reasonable.

Plus, Gen. Kelly is from Boston and Scaramucci is from New York.  Want to guess how long before the whole Red Sox-Yankees thing blew up in a very ugly scene?  Trust me, that wouldn't be good, and Kelly is a Taurus, too -- we share a birthday.

So I think that if you look at all this as a logical chain of command situation, it makes perfect sense.  No scandal, just a logical sequencing.

I'm good with that.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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