Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why

by Alexandra Petri

  We got an appointee for the Supreme Court! That, already, is a great accomplishment.

  If this were a real crisis, there would be no other news. An alert would go over the TV. It would say, “Democracy Alert!” and make an unpleasant sound. In the meantime, I’m glad those Unicorn Frappuccinos are gone.

  But the background music has not crescendoed. I look out the window, and the sun is shining. On the television the colorful heads are speaking as they have always spoken, and they are still not in agreement. I think. It is getting harder to see in here, and I feel a curious warmth spreading through all my appendages. I would not feel this way if something really serious were going on. The polls would reflect it, too.

  I am still getting what I wanted. It is good to have someone in the Oval Office who shares my values: covering everything with giant webs, eating flies, and restoring our relationship with Russia. I think I once had other values but, well, winning is winning.

  Also, we have yet to see what this will become.

  It is quite possible that the thing spewing its webbing everywhere in the Oval Office is not in its final form. Perhaps it will ultimately look like Merrick Garland. We should wait. Really, everything depends on the next move. Which will, of course, set the terms for the move after that. All of which we must contemplate and look into.

  It’s very dark.

  If we are ever in a point of real crisis, I will be the hero the country requires. I know that about myself. But in the meantime, I stand behind the president, who I am positive is not literally Nixon.

  Besides, if it were really bad, Paul Ryan would say something.

  I want to sleep.

  If this were a crisis, something would be done by someone. A hero would emerge.

  If there were an occasion, I would be rising to it. But I am not rising.

  May 12, 2017

  What the Ethics Chief Really Wanted to Say in His Resignation Letter

  The Office of Government Ethics director, Walter Shaub, has submitted a letter of resignation. He will depart on July 19 to work for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

  “The great privilege and honor of my career has been to lead OGE’s staff and the community of ethics officials in the federal executive branch,” he wrote. “They are committed to protecting the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.”

  Shaub told NPR that “the current situation has made it clear that the ethics program needs to be stronger than it is.”

  This was much less strongly worded than the previous draft, which ran as follows:

  LISTEN, I HAVE TO RESIGN for my own mental health, because I am honestly starting to wonder if I am invisible.

  Now that I am leaving, let me ask: Have you gotten any of the warnings about disclosures and conflicts of interest that I have sent for the past numerous months? It seems like you have, and it certainly looked like they had gone through, but—nothing. I go into rooms and clear my throat pointedly and no one even looks up from signing a directive to make sure that our desire to protect our drinking water does not interfere with making golf courses great again.

  Most days I feel like I am dropping a copy of the emoluments clause into a dark deep black hole from which nothing, not even radiation, can escape.

  Sometimes I send an email with very pointed italics saying “this doesn’t seem okay” but—not even crickets. I think the crickets are dead. I go home and I am sometimes startled when people respond to my voice. Sometimes cats look right through me.

  Ideally, we are supposed to suggest ways of resolving conflicts, but people have to WANT to resolve conflicts. Right now, the only blind trust that Donald Trump has is the blind trust that the American people have placed in him to run his business appropriately.

  And what’s worse is that, somehow, it seems like literally everyone outside the administration has gotten the idea that they ought to call me to tell me about ethics violations. I appreciate it. It makes me feel wanted, I guess. It is nice to have thousands upon thousands of calls. I think they think that I can stop it, somehow. But I can’t. All I can do is suggest until I am blue in the face. And I am. If my face is still visible, which I sincerely doubt.

  I hope that, in future, people understand what the Office of Government Ethics can and cannot do. What it can do is SUGGEST, even going so far as to use ITALICS, but we don’t have investigative powers, and for a while I was worried we might not even be able to compel disclosures. That is up to Congress. I am not saying “please stop calling us,” but I feel like people keep telling me about cats in trees under the misapprehension that I can run off and change into a lifesaving spandex outfit and rescue them, and in fact I am just a mild-mannered fellow who can write a memo saying that the cat ought to be looked into.

  This is wearing on me, as it wears on the other employees. It seems wasteful to have an entire office of seventy people whose entire job is to make suggestions that nobody listens to. It makes us feel like ghosts.

  After a certain point you could just get a printed sign that says DON’T DO ANY OF THIS and it might do as good a job, and the sign wouldn’t get depressed and think to itself, “Is my whole life a waste? Does my voice even make a sound?”

  Honestly, do we need an Office of Government Ethics? If this is how you’re going to treat it, I think not. Sometimes I lie awake in the vast loneliness where I exist and no one takes notice of me, and I wonder if ethics might not be obsolete, anyway. They are cumbersome. They take sacrifices. They require you to comply and eliminate conflicts, not rush to conflicts and fan them. Never let it be said that Donald Trump backed down from a conflict. His business holdings reflect this, I think. I don’t know. Nobody knows, because his tax returns are still a riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by an impenetrable wall of darkness and lawyers.

  Speaking of lawyers, I understand that we are draining the swamp by filling the swamp with apex predators and letting them fight it out, so perhaps all these outdated rules about hiring lobbyists and industry types need to be chucked into the swamp too, to see if they survive. They probably won’t, but that will mean less paperwork for everyone.

  And I have had enough.

  One thing remains for me to do, and then my journey is ended. I will put ethics on my shoulder and walk and walk until I come to a place where no man knows what they are. Oops, I am already there. Well, never mind. I will continue to walk, because this is no way to live.

  July 7, 2017

  A Moderate Speaks: By God, Won’t Someone Else Take a Stand?

  THIS IS NOT THE SENATE that I believe in.

  I look around and see only the ruin of this once-great democratic institution. What has become of the process? Where are the committees? Where is the deliberation?

  This bill is bad, and it was made in a process that was even worse. The courageous thing to do would be to stand against it. And yet no one will, not even me.

  I am disgusted.

  Bills ought to be passed with deliberation by committees. Change should be achieved in a bipartisan manner. Incrementally, day by day, we should reach a consensus—not perfect, by any means, but something that we can be proud of, nonetheless. That is why, when this dangerous and secret bill came up for a vote, I said “Aye,” in such a cold and cutting tone.

  This place should not be vulnerable to the shifting winds of public opinion, like some sort of novelty windsock. The Senate was supposed to be like a saucer where the Founders could pour their coffee to cool it. Well, I don’t think this saucer would cool any coffee, because this saucer is BROKEN. And now this nation is covered in coffee. By God! (This was more stirring in my head.)

  We are supposed to make compromises. We are supposed to listen. But these sad days, no one will. Not even me.

  This is no way to proceed. Is anyone in favor of this legislation? Do we even know what this is? It is happening so fast that I cannot be sure, but it seems to benefi
t no one except taxpayers in high-income brackets and those who delight in human suffering. We are doing the legislative equivalent of throwing darts at a wall, but the wall is made of human faces.

  I have no idea what is passing and what is being debated. Everything around me is chaos. Out of the wreckage of the parliamentary procedure rides Mitch McConnell on a pale horse sowing destruction in his wake. I think we just agreed to push all wheelchairs, occupied or not, over a cliff somewhere, but honestly I have no idea.

  Will you just stand by and let this happen? You must not, because I will.

  Where are the courageous three or four people who are willing to stand alone with me against this? I can’t do it without the cover of a courageous three or four people, and those people are nowhere to be found.

  By God, what has become of the Senate? What has become of the nation’s greatest deliberative body? It is time that someone else took a stand. This legislation we are throwing frantically up for a vote is a disgrace to the country, it is cruel, and we arrived at it the wrong way, and so I will not vote for it more than once.

  After all, I am here to serve my constituents by doing what I think, after deliberation, is in their best interests. I am here because I believe people working together across the aisle to tackle the challenges facing America can pass laws that make people’s lives better and easier. That is why I am here, in theory. And I will gladly stand alone against this shameful process that threatens all that I hold dear by issuing a series of scathing statements to reporters on my way to vote for whatever this mystery bill is.

  We are the equal of the executive, but we don’t act like it. Well, we should start acting like it! Where is the brave man or woman who will go first? I eagerly await such a person.

  This bill was not given the process it deserves. We should have deliberated in committee. We should have held hearings. We should have done this the right way. So I, for one, will fight it tooth and nail. I will do everything except vote against it.

  Who will stand without me?

  July 27, 2017

  How Paul Manafort Came by $934,350 in Antique Carpets

  Buried among the revelations in the indictment against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort—charging him with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements to the FBI, and more—is the fact that he paid $934,350 to an antique rug store in Alexandria. Everything else about this story is also amazing, but I do not want to lose sight of this: $934,350, over a period of years, for carpets!

  Is not the simplest explanation the best and most likely to be true?

  Maybe Paul Manafort just loves carpets, and he was not deluding anyone in any way. $934,350 is a totally reasonable amount of money to spend at a rug store. You can easily see how this would happen.

  FIRST, YOU WALK INTO THE STORE, thinking you need a small and simple rug to bring the room together. You have lots of cash, for some reason. You can spend some on a rug, surely. Or what was the point of all your work abroad?

  You look at some carpets. They all seem about the same, so you pick one at random.

  “That one,” you say.

  The salesman nods sagely. “I see that you are someone with an eye for carpets,” he says.

  You have never thought of yourself as someone with an eye for carpets, but you always hate to disillusion people who have positive opinions of you, even when those people are salesmen. “Well,” you say, modestly, spreading your hands. “I dabble. I like a good . . .” Frantically, you try to remember the attributes that a good carpet is supposed to have. “Piling.”

  “Ah yes,” the salesman says, smoothly, “a good, tall pile. Then you had better come with me.”

  “I’m taking that one, of course,” you add, gesturing at the first rug.

  “Very good. That is, of course, $15,750,” the salesman says. Without waiting for your response, he leads you into the next room. These carpets are, frankly, more than you are looking for, but you don’t want to admit it. You point at a small one in the corner. “Seems good,” you say.

  “Ah,” the salesman says, adding it to the stack, “you are more than a match for me! We must go to the special collection! Nothing less will do for a man like you.”

  “Er,” you say. “I suppose we had better.”

  He throws open the door to another room, covered wall-to-wall with carpets. You drop your wallet in your nervousness and it entirely disappears into the deep, lush pile of one of them. The salesman has to send a wallet-sniffing dog in to retrieve it, and this costs an additional $7,400. You close your eyes and point at random to two carpets that you hope are not too expensive, but it turns out that they are $46,200. You call Cyprus to wire the money.

  The salesman watches you intently. “I can see you are not finished with us yet,” he says. “A true connoisseur! Your knowledge is magisterial! Do you wish to meet the Maestro?”

  “Yes,” you say, wilting a little inside.

  The Maestro is a man in a fancy hat who is perched on a rolled-up carpet. When you come in, he gazes at you solemnly. “You are a man who knows what he wants,” he says.

  “That’s me,” you say.

  “That is what she tells me.” He gestures to the carpet next to him. “She sensed your presence,” he says. “She will go home with you, she tells me.”

  “She,” you say. You swallow. “That is, the carpet?”

  The other salesman has appeared at your elbow with a glass of pricey champagne. “We will drink this to toast her new home,” he says.

  “Er,” you say, feebly, “actually, I think I’m about carpeted out. Got what I came for, as it were.”

  “Mais non!” the salesman says. He is speaking French now, which makes everything sound twice as expensive as before. “Jamais!”

  He unlocks a further door and leads you into an even more opulent room. It is full of carpets so beautiful you want to weep. They smell like home. The one in the middle is the finest yet. Looking on it, you know joy for the first time. A tag informs you that it was made lovingly by hand with entirely pure motives by the only good human being who remains in the world. It shows. “Climb on,” the salesman says. “Together, you will fly.”

  You climb onto the carpet, feeling rather foolish.

  “Look!” the salesmen cry, in raptures. “You are flying!”

  You don’t think you are flying, but the salesmen seem so impressed that you do not have the heart to disabuse them of this notion either. You mime flying around for a little bit and in the course of it you knock over an expensive lamp, lighting three carpets immediately on fire.

  “I will add them to your bill,” the first salesman says.

  “Yes,” you say. “I guess you’d better.” You are blind with panic. All you want now is to get out of this store before you cost yourself any more money. In your haste to get up you knock over two more lamps. The whole room is on fire.

  “That will be $934,350,” the salesperson says.

  “Ah,” you say. “I will wire the money to you slowly over a period of years, how does that sound?”

  “Fine,” the salesman says. “Do you want over half a million dollars’ worth of bespoke suits?”

  You shrug. “I might as well, at this point,” you say.

  And that is probably how Paul Manafort wound up with those expenses that we now see listed. This is a perfectly logical explanation that involves no money laundering at all.

  October 31, 2017

  Melania Trump Wants to Spend Christmas on a Deserted Island (With Her Family)

  Q: My name is Andy . . . I am 10 . . . If you could spend the holidays anywhere in the world, where would you go?

  FLOTUS: I would spend my holidays on a deserted island, a tropical island, with my family.

  —WHITE HOUSE POOL REPORT, 12/7/2017

  IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE CHRISTMAS on the island.

  It is full of nothing—only sand and miles and miles of wind-swept ocean.

  (And of course, your family is there, too.)

 
; There is no bullying on the island.

  You can walk down the beach and feel the sand in your toes and admire each tiny shellacked toenail, perfect as a shell, and listen to the waves.

  There is solitude on the island, and rest.

  (And, of course, your family is there, too.)

  The island is green.

  It does not look like the White House does, like someone heard the phrase “white Christmas” and thought that it meant all color had been purged from the world and all joy had been forgotten.

  It is just green and blue, and it is warm, so warm. You can feel the sun on your face.

  (Your family is there, too.)

  There are no ballerinas on the island performing only for you, as if you had sleepwalked into a child’s nightmare of The Nut-cracker. No one is performing for anyone. There is no one there at all, so everyone is kind.

  (Well, of course, your family is there, too.)

  At first you will eat the food you have brought with you, but later you will strike out for the middle of the island to see what bounty it offers. You will find a spring and drink from it, laughing at its coolness.

  You will climb a tree and harvest its fruit, and you will sing with the joy of labor. One morning, as you awaken by yourself with the sunrise, you will see a lizard lazing by your foot and for a moment the thought of how it might taste, the crunch it might make as you bite into its tiny bones, will cross your mind. But you will settle back in the sand to sleep.

  Your tan will be flawless.

  (And, of course, your family is there, too.)

  There is color here in the sky—red and blue in the birds’ wings, but it does not mean anything in particular.

  You use your red hat for fetching water. The writing fades.

  Everywhere there is a great stillness.

  You catch up on your magazines, but only the most cheerful ones, unhooked from time and the news. There is no cell reception here.

  You read: Meghan Markle is getting married. To a prince, even! That’s nice. You feel nothing but happiness for this Meghan Markle, marrying her prince, somewhere in a cold city far away where the flashbulbs paint cages with their tiny lights.