Alison Rowat: Flynn resignation mere outer shell of Trump’s Russian doll

At first Mr Flynn said he did no such thing. Then vice president Mike Pence went on television to defend Mr Flynn; as did Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, who insisted the president had full confidence in his man. But then the Washington Post reported details of the Kislyak-Flynn communications and revealed that the Justice Department had raised a red flag about the contact, fearing Mr Flynn had left himself open to blackmail.

So he had to go. In his resignation letter, he blamed the “fast pace of events” for the fact that he, as he put it, “inadvertently briefed the vice president-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador”. Cue much celebration from Mr Trump’s opponents, with filmmaker Michael Moore among those cracking open the hashtag “impeach” and calling for the arrest of Messrs Flynn and Trump.

Say one thing about the Trump administration: the dull moments are about as numerous as roller skating unicorns. But how much does it matter that Mr Trump has lost his man? Is it just an early hiccup of the kind that befalls many a government during that tricky first 100-days period when the reality of the governing task kicks in? Or are we seeing the first wheel coming off the Trump car and going boing, boing, boing, down the road?

First, Mr Flynn’s early departure matters, not just because of what the national security adviser does, but for what the affair says about this administration and the man leading it. A signal of the job’s importance lies in the fact the adviser is given office space in the West Wing. He (or she), serves as the president’s wartime consigliere, there to guide him (always him) on the correct foreign affairs course. Several departments will want to have their say but the national security adviser is the one who can lay claim to having the president’s ear. Some have become household names – Henry Kissinger, John Poindexter, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice among them – but most toil in obscurity, as was intended when the post was created in the torrid times of the early Cold War period.

A fundamental requirement of the job is the ability to stay above the fray. The position needs someone who will tell the commander-in-chief what he needs to hear, not just what he might want to hear. Someone who knows when to wake him at 3am and when to let him sleep; in short, a straight-shooter. Candidates whose recollections may be prone to ricochet should not apply, hence Mr Flynn’s departure.

An intelligence professional with 33 years in the US Army and an operator familiar with Washington ways, Mr Flynn might have been thought to be a reasonably safe choice. Yet he had been forced into early retirement by the Obama administration (for being a bad manager, critics said; for speaking out about failures to tackle Islamist extremism, said supporters). Even more of a warning sign was his behaviour at the Republican convention, leading the “lock-her-up” chant. He is a Trump true believer. Even at the last, in his resignation statement, he paid tribute to the boss, saying “this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in US history”.

Presidents want to be surrounded by supporters. But the appointment of Mr Flynn and the stuffing of the Trump cabinet with billionaires and party donors with little to no experience of public office shows Mr Trump has been determined to apply his criteria when assessing fitness to serve, and high up on the list is unquestioning loyalty.

Again, when you look at his record in business, one can understand why he trusts his gut instinct about people. When he chose talented folk to run his real estate schemes in the past the projects were a success. He made money, lots of it. Indeed, it was when he flew solo that problems arose. But picking an architect or a casino manager is not the same as choosing a secretary of state, and being the president is as far from being an ordinary boss as the White House is from Wick.

One of the pieces of advice Barack Obama gave Mr Trump before leaving office was to remember that the job was too big to do on one’s own; that team work was essential. But that is not how Mr Trump operates. He sees himself first and last as The Boss, the hirer and firer, the man who wields the pen, changing the fate of millions at a stroke. Having picked his team, or more likely having it chosen for him, Mr Trump must be starting to worry how many other mistakes might be sitting round the table with him.

His White House communications team, as was seen in the Flynn flip-flopping, has gone straight past dysfunctional and set up camp at doolally. If there is no cohesion here, where else is the administration coming apart at the seams? Especially at a time of heightened international tension, the White House does not have the luxury of being able to send out mixed messages, be they contained in 140-character tweets or chaotic press briefings.

As for what America’s friends think of the continued drip-drip of stories about the administration’s relations with Russia, Mr Trump will put that to one side for now. It is what the American public thinks that matters to him: America first, remember. There will be some in Team Trump who will say voters care little about the departure of a national security adviser, that it is just more goings on inside the Washington “bubble”. But people do notice such things, just as they take note of court defeats. Republicans in Congress, moreover, must be increasingly concerned that the Flynn story is just the outer shell of the Russian doll.

Life moves fast in the Trump administration. We knew it would. But there is moving fast and there is spinning out of control.