The good news is that most policy issues are handled at a lower level, in the National Security Council’s deputies meetings—consisting of deputy secretaries or undersecretaries, assistant directors, and vice chiefs of staff. The bad news, at least during the Trump administration, is that these meetings are chaired by the deputy national security adviser. Trump’s pick, K.T. McFarland, is even less suitable than Flynn.

McFarland is a right-wing national security commentator for Fox News and touts an impressive-looking résumé that includes national security jobs dating back to the Nixon administration. But the jobs were low-level: a typist, then a junior analyst, for Henry Kissinger under Nixon; an assistant speechwriter for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger under Reagan. (McFarland, whose name was then Kathleen Troia, also flipped the read-along cards when Weinberger testified before congressional committees.) She has never held a job involved in making policy, and her new job is involved in little else.