I have three problems with this article. But first, let me concede that Donald Trump’s behavior at times does evoke images of deranged commanders such as Captain Queeg of The Caine Mutiny or Colonel Jessup of A Few Good Men.
Still, the Jarvis article seems off base.
First, Jarvis’s initial proclamation that it’s time to call Trump mentally ill implies that there has been reluctance to state that elsewhere, previously. But doubts about Trump’s sanity have been expressed widely by others — for instance, Eliot Cohen — and for months. So Jarvis is not opening any new doors here.
More importantly, Jarvis — like others who make similar charges — fails to acknowledge the dangers, and ugly precedents, of the use of psychiatry for political ends. In an article reviewing the sordid history of this practice, researchers Massimiliano Buoli and Aldo Sabino Giannuli observe:
Psychiatry has been variously used by totalitarian regimes as a means of political persecution and especially when it was necessary to make acceptable to public opinion the imprisonment of political opponents.
At the least, the gravity of charging Trump with madness, and of the perilous consequences of invoking the 25th Amendment on the grounds of psychiatric disability, should be appreciated.
Finally, even if Trump is unhinged, those inclined to trumpet that the president is crazy ought to pause to consider the question raised by Soviet spy Rudolph Abel in The Bridge of Spies:
Does it really help to declare that Trump is mad? It is a question worth pondering because the answer is not entirely clear.
It may seem to Trump opponents and critics that targeting Trump’s mental health, skirting questions of ideology, might allow Trump voters to join in efforts to remove or at least neutralize him. But it seems at least equally if not more plausible that a charge against Trump’s sanity will be perceived by his ardent supporters as an attack on them, and fuel for the conspiracy theories that Trump has long stoked.
A more substantive reason to attend to the president’s mental health is the matter of nuclear weapons. In the complex chain of command, under current law only the president has authority to order a nuclear strike independently. This grew out of concern during and after World War II that civilians, not military officers, should have ultimate control of the use of nuclear weapons. But in the parlance of systems science, this makes the president a “single point of failure.”
In light of that issue, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R, UT), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he is considering legislation to require all presidents to undergo an independent medical — including psychiatric — examination. “If you’re going to have your hands on the nuclear codes, you should probably know what kind of mental state you’re in,” Chaffetz told the Washington Post.
An insanity defense might be pertinent if or when Trump were charged in criminal court. But it would have little relevance to an impeachment trial. Then it is only up to the judgment of members of Congress whether the nation’s best interest is served by retaining or removing the president.
The Congress’s view in that situation will reflect the sense of a persuasive majority of the electorate. Shortly after Richard Nixon’s second inauguration in 1973, his public approval was up to about 70 percent. By the time the House initiated impeachment proceedings in the summer of 1974, Nixon’s public approval was below 25 percent.
Donald Trump entered office with the lowest level of public approval of a new president on record, around 46 percent. After less then four weeks of the Trump administration’s tenure, public disapproval has risen to 54 percent.
Overall, it seems that the risks and harm to national security and welfare of the Trump administration’s corruption and malpractice is what really matters — not whether or not their motives are rational. And arguing over claims that Trump is crazy may distract attention from the palpable harm Trump’s actions pose to the nation and its people.
