My friend and former Choate classmate Pumphrett has always embraced ignorance. He argues that ignorance is empowering because it vastly expands one’s options. “Why, if you’re ignorant enough,” he has often said, “there’s virtually nothing you don’t think you can do.”
In keeping with this philosophy, Pumphrett has cultivated ignorance in himself and sought it out in others, and now—to hear him tell it—he’d finally found a group of people who cherished obliviousness as much as he. Pumphrett, as I should explain to those who have not followed my previous jottings, is now a senior member of the White House staff.
All this was brought to mind on a recent Tuesday as my old friend and I were being seated for lunch in the White House Mess, where Pumphrett, who has risen in the White House hierarchy (for reasons I shall presently explain), is now privileged to dine. I had been surprised to receive his invitation. Pumphrett had previously worked for Michael Flynn, who’s appointment as National Security Advisor had been both unexpected and blessedly brief. Flynn, a soldier by trade but a zealot by inclination, had been caught telling what for want of a more accurate term might be called “lies” about his contacts with the morbidly stout but irresistibly affable Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kisylak. As a consequence, Flynn had been condemned to spending more time with his family, and I had feared that Pumphrett would be flushed away with him.
My fears had proven unfounded. It turned out, as Pumphrett explained, that he was the only member of the White House Staff who hadn’t conspired with Kisylak. With the Justice Department “off the leash” and endless investigations looming, the White House needed someone on the Staff who was “perjury proof.” Accordingly, my companion had become the man of the hour and had not only been retained but—“to make my testimony seem more credible”—promoted.
He took this turn of events as another confirmation of his thesis about ignorance, and now, as we made ourselves comfortable, he began expounding—rather too portentously for my taste—on the virtues of vapidity as they related to success in the Trump White House.
“I tell you, Cushy, some of these people make me look positively informed by comparison. You take young Steven Miller….please! (Pumphrett, I should explain, has an unfortunate fondness for old Henny Youngman jokes). He’s barely out of short pants, he’s never had an occupation save lackey, and yet there he is writing orders to ban millions of Muslims from visiting the United States. And he didn’t even have the sense to make the racism implicit, as a more seasoned toady would have. Of course, it all went south, but that’s beside the point. I tell you, Cushy, the man girds his loins with cluelessness. And yet he rises. If he could only stop his eyes swiveling on camera, he’d probably displace us all.”
I always grow uncomfortable when Pumphrett mentions loins, but now I couldn’t resist tweaking him. “Why, Pumphrett,” I chortled, “you’re jealous.”
“Well, he is spending a lot of time with Steve. (The reference, I gleaned, was to White House eminence grise Stephen K. Bannon, for whom Pumphrett feels a not altogether ideological attraction.)
“So, it’s ‘Steve’ now is it? You know, old man, I don’t think it’s healthy to…” He interrupted me with an upraised palm.
“That’s not it,” grumped a blushing Pumphrett, stamping his Farragamo loafer on the executive carpeting. Eying me conspiratorially he continued: “You don’t understand what it’s like. The long knives are out. It’s so bad people have taken to stabbing each other in the front. I need a patron, a godfather—and one who’ll be around for a while. Obscurity isn’t enough anymore.”
I suddenly noticed that the crowd in the Mess was curiously subdued. At every table sat hunched clutches of dark-suited young people speaking in low tones and glancing furtively around them. Many a brow was beaded with sweat. Cupping a hand in front of his mouth, Pumphrett elucidated:
“The President,” he intoned in the manner of an Aztec priest explaining a recent earthquake, “has been in a mood.”
“Mad, is he?”
“As a hatter. But angry, too.” He took a deep breath. “I happened to be hugging the wall in the Oval Office when he let loose on the staff. His face turned an even more unearthly color and he started swearing fit to shame a Tijuana brothel keeper. Why was it, he demanded, that he was always signing executive orders he hadn’t read? (Priebus started to edge out from behind Bannon to respond to this, but quickly thought better of it.) And who had told Flynn to reassure the Russians about sanctions? (We all looked at each other at this point, but no one, of course, looked at him.) And why had no one told him about Sessions recusing himself, just because of some furshlugginer law.”
“Now that part surprises me,” I interceded. I didn’t think he had any Yiddish.”
“He didn’t actually say furshlugginer, Cushy. I’m trying to be polite. Then he rounded on Miller and inquired what the hell they were paying him for if he couldn’t make a simple Muslim ban seem less racist than it actually was. Miller started to explain they’d never had to worry about that sort of thing when he was working for Sessions, but Trump cut him off. Then he screamed that we were all betraying him, that Priebus was a useless lump, that Ryan was chisel-chinned lunkhead who couldn’t count, that everywhere he went was bugged, and that Putin’s voice was echoing ceaselessly in his head.”
“In his head? Really, now. He didn’t say that, did he?”
“I’m trying to give you the flavor, Cushy.”
“So, it was bad.”
“Well, not for me personally. A memo had circulated asking for our support for the President’s claim about Obama’s wiretapping. I responded that I didn’t know that it hadn’t happened. It was the most positive response they received, so my stock is up.”
“Making ignorance work for you.”
“Yes, but I prefer to think of it as following the President’s example. You’ve heard that he’s done away with the morning intelligence briefing.” I had heard that and wondered why a President would choose to be uninformed, but now Pumphrett explained.
“As you know, Cushy, the President’s normal approach might best be described as an exercise in free-range psychosis. Ideas bubble out of him like swamp gas in the everglades. It’s all new age, improvisational. In short, he just lets fly. But that style depends—and crucially so—on his not knowing what he’s talking about. Facts are like static on the clear channel between his id and his larynx. And here’s the rub: The more the intelligence briefers tell him, the more he knows, and the more he knows, the less he can say.”
“But why not just ignore all that and go on, you know, winging it?”
“Because he has a sort of prehensile grip on the problem of sources and methods. He knows that big trouble in that direction lies. But how is he to remember what the briefers told him, what he watched on Fox, and what he heard from some crackbrained, public access radio personality? You see the problem.”
“I do, yes. But how does this help you?”
“It’s quite simple, Cushy. One ignoramus can always recognize another. So, as I say, my stock is rising. In fact I’m drawing nearer the throne.”
“Have a care, there, Pumphrett. Remember: Hic semper in umbra tenet deorum.”
“I have to tell you, Cushy, this business of thowing Latin at me is growing a trifle tiresome. You know I never went much beyond e pluribus pluribus, or whatever it was.”
“It means: ‘It is always darkest in the shadow of the Gods.’”
“Oh tosh,” replied Pumphrett. “In fact I think I’ve discovered the secret of success. Why, if I can just keep from finding out about anything, there’s really no limit to how high I can go.”