Aaron David Miller

It's the absence of curiosity, Dave.

That's the real issue.

So I'm sitting at my desk in the early 80s, and the phone rings.

It's a White House sit room.

I'm the State Department's Lebanon analyst.

We're in the middle of a major deployment of American Marines to Lebanon.

Next voice I hear is Vice President George H.W.

Bush.

I read one of your memos on Lebanon.

Do you have a few minutes?

I know you're busy.

Can we talk about it?

So the Vice President of the United States is calling me because I wrote a memo that he read?

Jack Kennedy used to call the Vietnam analysts at State Department when he wanted another view, another opinion.

That doesn't exist here.

His advisors, president's advisors, are scared of him.

Trump had four secretaries of defense and six national security advisors in his first term.

You can't run the railroad if nobody is telling the boss

that there may be a problem, you know, on the tracks to Pittsburgh, and you need to fix it.

Or if the trains are running in a bad direction, you got to change the direction.