By Nikki Haley

The writer  is U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. This first appeared in the Washington Post







" We have enough issues to deal with in the world, so it's unfortunate to have to take time to write this, but I feel compelled to address the claims in the anonymous "resistance" op-ed published last week in the New York Times.

The author might think he or she is doing a service to the country. I strongly disagree. What this "senior official in the Trump administration" has done, and is apparently intent on continuing to do, is a serious disservice — not just to the president but to the country.

I, too, am a senior Trump administration official. I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country. But I don't agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person.

Like my colleagues in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council, I have very open access to the president. He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him. I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do.

If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens. Sometimes he changes course, sometimes he doesn't. That's the way the system should work. And the American people should be comfortable knowing that's the way the system does work in this administration.

What this anonymous author is doing is very dangerous. He or she claims to be putting the country first, and that is the right goal. Everyone in government owes a greater loyalty to our country and our Constitution than to any individual officeholder. But a central part of our democracy requires that those who work directly for the president not secretly try to undermine him or his policies. What the author is describing is an extra-constitutional method of addressing policy disputes within the administration. That's wrong on a fundamental level.

If the author truly is a senior administration official, then he or she has the kind of access to the president I described. If that is the case, this official has ample opportunity to try to persuade the president to change course. If the author is frustrated by an inability to persuade the president, then he or she is free to resign.

By making sweeping, but mostly unspecific, anonymous claims, the author creates many problems. Taking this course sows mistrust among the thousands of government workers who do their jobs honestly every day. It unfairly casts doubt on the president in a way that cannot be directly refuted because the anonymous accuser's credibility and knowledge cannot be judged. It encourages U.S. adversaries to promote their hostile claims about the stability of our government.

What's more, by throwing gas on a fire of endless distraction, the author and the frenzied media reaction to the op-ed have hurt all of us trying to do our jobs for the country.

Dissent is as American as apple pie. If you don't like this president, you are free to say so, and people do that quite frequently and loudly. But in the spirit of civility that the anonymous author claims to support, every American should want to see this administration succeed. If it does, it's a win for the American people.

As a former governor, I find it absolutely chilling to imagine that a high-ranking member of my team would secretly try to thwart my agenda. That is not the American way. It is fundamentally disloyal, not just to the chief executive, but to our country and our values.

To Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, I say: Step up and help the administration do great things for the country. If you disagree with some policies, make your case directly to the president. If that doesn't work, and you are truly bothered by the direction of the administration, then resign on principle. There is no shame in that. But do not stay in your position and secretly undermine the president and the rest of our team. It is cowardly, it is anti-democratic, and it is a disservice to our country. "

" The numbers: The U.S. budget deficit in August was $211 billion, nearly double the gap during the year-ago month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated late Monday.

Adjusted for shifts in the timing of payments that otherwise would have occurred on a weekend of holiday, the deficit would have grown by 19%. The Treasury Department will report final official numbers on Thursday, and they are usually very similar to the CBO’s.

What happened: Excluding timing shifts, outlays grew 8%, as the net interest on public debt jumped 25%, defense spending jumped 10%, outlays for Social Security grew 5%, and outlays for Medicare benefits rose 7%. There also was an Agriculture Department downward adjustment made in the year-ago August. One boost to government finances was an increase in spectrum payments to the Federal Communications Commission.

Receipts fell by 3%, with corporate taxes dropping by $5 billion, while revenue from income and payroll taxes rose marginally.

The big picture: The budget deficit is widening in a big way. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the deficit was $895 billion, which is $222 billion more than the previous year. Outlays have climbed 7% while revenue rose 1%.

Corporate taxes have plummeted by 30% this fiscal year, both because of the lower rate as well as the expanded ability to immediately deduct the full value of equipment purchases. Individual income and payroll taxes have climbed 4%, as increasing wages — mostly, due to more people having jobs — offset a lower withholding rate.

Spending on Social Security and Medicare have climbed 4% as more baby boomers retire, outlays on net interest on the debt have jumped 19% in part due to a higher rate of inflation triggering more payments to inflation-protected securities holders, and defense spending has jumped 6%.

Kevin Hassett, the White House chief economic adviser, was careful in a briefing with reporters on Monday to say the corporate tax cuts — but not the whole package — would pay for themselves with higher growth.

“I think that the notion that the corporate tax side has about paid for itself is clearly in the data,” he said. “On the individual side, there was about a trillion-dollar cost. About $700 billion of that was a refundable child credit that got expanded at the last minute to get the votes they needed to pass it.”

(The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the modification to the child tax credit to cost $573 billion over a decade, and that the individual side cost $1.13 trillion in total.)

Other administration officials have made more sweeping claims that the entire tax cut would pay for itself, including Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin and former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.

"  A consensus is building in both U.S. political parties that Democrats are heavily favored to take control of the House of Representatives on Nov. 6 and to pick up half a dozen governors' offices, while Republicans hang on to their slim Senate majority.

But there's a caveat: Politics is unpredictable with President Donald Trump in the White House.

It would be foolish to rule out the possibility that the prospect of Republican losses in the midterm election will provoke Trump to take some kind of dramatic executive action during the next eight weeks. If he does, it could work for his party or it could just as easily backfire.

Democrats would need to pick up 23 Republican seats to take over the House and two to capture the Senate. There are 20 to 25 House seats and seven or eight Senate seats that remain toss-ups. Any of them could be tipped by mistakes, embarrassing revelations or unusual developments like ones that took place last week when Michigan's Republican governor refused to endorse his party's candidate to succeed him, or when Florida's Democratic gubernatorial candidate made a pedestrian choice of a running mate.

But the momentum building toward a Democratic wave, small or sizable, is unlikely to fade. "I've never seen a wave reverse or dissipate between midsummer and Election Day," said Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report and a sage of U.S. elections. "They have just remained constant or gotten bigger, like 1994 and 2006."

Over more than half a century, there have only been two midterm elections where a post-Labor Day event changed the dynamics of the overall race. In both cases, these involved weighty historical events, and Republicans were marginally hurt. One was in 1974, when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for crimes related to the Watergate scandal. The other was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

An international crisis is possible, especially if Trump seeks to create a distraction from his own scandals. Whether real or manufactured, Trump would be called upon to handle it with the same skill President John Kennedy displayed during the Cuban nuclear confrontation in the Cold War. That's far-fetched.

The 2018 do-nothing Congress still has a month to go. House Republican leaders want to pass a few spending bills and get out by early October so endangered incumbents can campaign. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will probably keep the Senate in session for most of October to inhibit Democratic incumbents from spending more time on the campaign trail and to force votes on federal judicial nominations.

For all the fury over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he's expected to be confirmed on a mostly party-line vote, perhaps by Oct. 1, when the Supreme Court convenes. Politically, the fight probably is a wash or a slight energizer for Democrats.

These plans could be sidetracked if Trump threatens a government shutdown to try to force Congress to approve money for his wall on the southern border. The issue of a small pay raise for federal employees, which budget director Mick Mulvaney nixed, could get ensnared in this. Fearing the pay raise could cost them a half-dozen House seats, Republican leaders would like to pass a modified version but fear Trump won't go along.

The president earlier threatened a shutdown, then last week seemed to retreat, only to renew the threat yet again. As Stan Collender, a commentator on the federal budget, noted, "Nothing Trump says on any particular day should be treated as gospel."

Trump retains the support of his most loyal fans, but his credibility among other Americans is eroding. The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, reported Sept. 4 that the president has made 4,713 false or misleading statements since he took the oath of office in 2017; the summer months saw new highs.

Trump's unpredictability is bound to be amplified in the coming weeks. He has already lashed out wildly over revelations in a new book by Washington-watcher Bob Woodward and an anonymous New York Times op-ed column about White House dysfunction and efforts by staffers there to undermine their boss. Soon-to-be released books by the journalist Michael Lewis on chaos in important agencies and the communications scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson on Russian manipulation of the 2016 presidential election — not to mention continuing fallout from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible links between the Trump campaign and the election meddling — are likely to enrage this unstable president even more.

I remember the dark moods of White House aides during the Watergate scandal and after the exposure in 1998 of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. But these were mild compared to the gloom in the Trump White House, where hardly anyone trusts anyone else.

For the midterms, one slim hope for Republicans is that they tend to narrow their polling deficits right before an election. That's often because Democratic voters aren't motivated. This November, however, Democrats have the great motivator sitting in the White House.  "

" A surefire ideological Kool-Aid test? Those who think Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was wounded during his hearings have heavily imbibed.

Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee set out to prove Kavanaugh is a mendacious political hack with the strategy of acting like mendacious political hacks. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., offered to sacrifice his political career in a move obviously calculated to serve his political career, boldly releasing “confidential” committee documents that had already been released and that did nothing to prove Kavanaugh’s unfitness.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., hinted darkly at the malignant influence of the Federalist Society — though it turned out that every member of the current Supreme Court, and Whitehouse himself, had participated in Federalist Society events. Kavanaugh displayed many skills during his Senate hearings, but one above all: the ability to suffer political fools.

A few Democratic members, including the consistently thoughtful Sen. Chris Coons, attempted to discuss the law. But this was largely a distraction from a series of “scandals” that never rose above the level of clarifications. Was Kavanaugh somehow responsible for an enhanced interrogation program that was above his security clearance and that he was never briefed about? Was he somehow responsible for knowing that information from swiped Democratic briefing memos had made their way into material he read? Was he somehow responsible for the birth-control views of a plaintiff because the nominee made reference to it? This last charge, summarized by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., as a “dog whistle going after birth control,” earned “Four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.

Each political side has chosen to live in a post-truth world. In one case, deceit serves the president’s interests and ego. In the other case, deceit serves progressive ideology. But in both instances, loyalty is proved by lies.

And by viciousness. Attempts by progressive interest groups to influence the undecided Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in her words, “have been laced with threats, with profanity, with vulgar language, completely inappropriate.” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., calls this “unfortunate.” Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., calls it “shameful.” Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, says he is “embarrassed by the circus” that Supreme Court confirmations have become. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., began a round of questions with an apology to Kavanaugh: “I’m sorry about the circumstances, but we’ll get through it.” And she was later slammed by progressives for this demonstration of disloyal politeness.

Bitterness in this broken process is, of course, nothing new. But there has been a serious decline in the quality of calumny. When the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., went after Judge Robert Bork in 1987, even the deceptions had more gravity. “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions,” Kennedy thundered, “blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government.”

What are some of the closing charges against Kavanaugh? In Kavanaugh’s America, sports fans spend unsustainable amounts on season tickets, judges refuse to shake the hand of a stranger they don’t realize is the parent of a shooting victim and meaningless papers that pass through the hands of a White House staff secretary are withheld at whim. And if you don’t wear an outfit from “The Handmaid’s Tale” and constantly interrupt your enemies, you are a (expletive deleted).

I have no doubt that some senators will attempt to channel Kennedy’s charges against Kavanaugh during the floor debate. But this nominee has none of Bork’s air of menace. He is a careful, thoughtful judge of originalist convictions and moderate temperament. And he is more than qualified for the court. A statement from faculty at Yale University calls him “a true intellectual” and “one of the most learned judges in America.”

It is simply not credible to hold Kavanaugh responsible for the offense of replacing the Supreme Court’s swing vote. It is not credible to hold Kavanaugh responsible for the shabby treatment that President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, received. And it is not credible to impose a pro-choice litmus test on the nominee of a pro-life president.

Kavanaugh is the best of his judicial peers; he is better than his senatorial accusers; and, if there is any justice, he is headed for confirmation.  "