Lori Falce: The bogus integrity of the last-straw brigade

I love a dramatic gesture.

If you use a pregnant pause to build anticipation, I will eat it up. If you can make an entrance a little more grand, I fully support that. If you want to make turning in your two weeks’ notice a production worthy of Meryl Streep, I will get out the popcorn and watch. And I am guilty of all of these myself. There is a frustrated Broadway star in me dying to get out.

But for a gesture to have real drama, it has to have meaning. It has to have cost.

On Wednesday night, after protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol following a Trump rally, the dramatic gestures began.

They started with resignations among the White House staff.

Rickie Niceta was Melania Trump’s social secretary. Sarah Matthews was a deputy White House press secretary who claimed the events of the day, which included the death of a West Virginia woman shot by Capitol Police, left her “deeply disturbed.”

Stephanie Grisham, at one time the White House press secretary, resigned as the first lady’s chief of staff. Matthew Pottinger withdrew as White House deputy national security adviser.

“I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mick Mulvaney said in an appearance on CNBC.

Trump’s second-longest serving — and yet still only acting — chief of staff, Mulvaney most recently served as special envoy to Northern Ireland in the State Department.

On Thursday, the stakes got higher as more resignation letters stacked up on the chief of staff’s desk.

Tyler Goodspeed said the incident “made my position no longer tenable” as he stepped down from the acting chairmanship of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

John Costello withdrew as the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and security.

The most prominent was Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed,” Chao tweeted. “As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled in me a way I simply cannot set aside.”

Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol was shocking. It no doubt provoked real feelings in many people as they watched on television or, for those in Washington, out their windows.

But there is something terribly disingenuous about these departures. They have a puppet-show level of caricature and drama, not because of the talk but the timing.

They all come from people who would already be out of work on Jan. 20 when Joe Biden is sworn in.

Everyone who works in the White House or the administration works at the pleasure of the president, whatever president that happens to be. But they also work at their own pleasure, as proven by the frequent revolving door of ins and outs that are a part of every administration.

According to the Brookings Institution, the Trump administration had a 91% turnover rate. Several of those who left this week have been with the president since the beginning, whether in one position like Chao or several like Mulvaney.

In Trump’s defense, his behavior, his priorities and his actions have changed little since his first campaign began in 2015, or even when he began his political rhetoric years earlier. If one supported his words and deeds for four years, and especially since the November election, was Wednesday really a big enough difference to prompt resignation with just 12 days left on the calendar?

Leaving early is common, like sneaking out of church after communion to avoid the traffic in the parking lot. But that’s done quietly.

Making a dramatic exit like this is 2018 instead of 2021 seems less about acting aghast than it does acting like you haven’t been part of the administration all along.