In political Washington, 2017 will be the year of the chicken

By Richard Cohen Opinion writer January 2 at 7:26 PM


In Chinese culture, this will be the year of the rooster. It will be celebrated in the usual style with firecrackers and dragon dances. In the culture of political Washington, this will instead be the year of the chicken. It will be celebrated by mute men, uniformed in dark suits and red ties, nodding insincerely as the president of the United States embarrasses the nation and makes an ass of himself. On second thought, this could be the year of the capon.

Whatever poultry term you use, the year will see rather ordinary people, raised to some prominence by President Donald Trump, not risk their pen and pencil desk set by contradicting the president. They will awake every morning with the fear that yet another tweet is upon the land — something false or insulting or merely incomprehensible, like yet another smooch for Vladimir Putin, virtual dictator of his own nation and invader of nearby ones.

They already appear at the door to Mar-a-Lago or some such place, assuming their position to Trump’s left or right and listening as he mucks up U.S. relations with China, complicates affairs with the Arab world, names a conspiracy buff to be his national security adviser and contemptuously dismisses a CIA finding that Russia interfered in the presidential election. He took the finding about Russia much as the pope once did about Galileo’s heretical astrological discoveries — evidence be damned. Besides, as Trump’s transition team noted, the CIA has been wrong in the past.

And so it has. But so has Trump. Witness his several bankruptcies and his insistence, since retracted, that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. The CIA works for the president, and the next one has not only already insulted it, but also effectively told it not to bring him information he doesn’t want to hear. I can’t imagine he runs his hotels that way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-culture-of-political-washington-2017-will-be-the-year-of-the-chicken/2017/01/02/70e10928-ce98-11e6-a87f-b917067331bb_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.569bcd4aa7ec