Another Trump chief of staff ousted

Mick Mulvaney has been White House acting chief of staff for 14 months. By all accounts a helluva of a hellhole job in the current administration. You might say an impossibe job, impossible to please the president all the time, exhausting, all-consuming, battered and bashed from all sides and constantly waiting for the call from the Oval Office: "You're fired." Well, now it has happened. To stay in the job for 14 months is quite an achievement. I'd be surprised if his call home to his wife, mother of triplets, did not go along these lines: "Hello, darling, I've got bad news and good news. The bad news is I've been fired as White House chief of staff, the good news is that I've been fired as White House chief of staff." Actually the "good news" offered by Trump was that he is to be special envoy for Northern Ireland. I don't know whether Mulvaney considers that to be a good move for him but I bet he's relieved to be out of the White House furnace. His two predecessors, Reince Priebus and General John Kelly, often looked like they had been hit by a sledgehammer and departed without a fuss. Mulvaney will soon disappear into the boondocks and in comes a bright and cheery-looking bloke, Republican Representative Mark Meadows, to take charge. I doubt his cheeriness will last long. Trump, if you believe all the Washington gossip, is a tyrant leader who always thinks he knows best and hates being told otherwise. General Kelly, being a smart military type of long experience, thought he could come in and sort out the president, masterminding his working day, only to find that the president didn't like being masterminded, even if it meant his daily chores were more ordered. He loved to be able to ring any one of his trusted advisers outside the White House and have a chat. That was always a nightmare for Kelly and probably for Mulvaney who wanted to keep a handle on who the president spoke with and why. Trump got fed up with Kelly's orderliness. He's friends with Meadows, so there's a chance things will go well for a month or so. But friendship inside the Oval Office is different from friendship outside the White House. It's bound to get tricky soon enough. Then Trump will be looking for his fifth chief of staff. Perhaps he needs a woman in charge.