Harry Truman explained the Slow Walk shortly after the 1952 election. “Eisenhower is used to the Army where orders are received and orders are followed up. But when Ike sits behind this desk and gives an order, not one single goddam thing is going to happen.”
The Raincoat occurs when an agency doesn’t like the presidential choice of who heads it. The political appointee receives just enough information to go before Congress to guarantee its annual appropriation. The people within the agency instead report to the top career person in the agency. I’ll give you two examples within CIA.
When Jack Kennedy allowed Allan Dulles to retire gracefully after the Bay of Pigs disaster, he appointed Orange County businessman John McCone to head CIA. McCone got the Raincoat. Company people actually reported to James Jesus Angleton (Counterintelligence) and Richard Helms (Operations).
When Ronald Reagan appointed William Casey to head CIA, he got the Raincoat. Casey had been fired, along with a lot of other Cold Warriors, by Stansfield Turner, Jimmy Carter’s CIA chief, in the infamous Halloween Massacre of 1977 due to their “outdated thinking.” Casey landed on his feet, got the Head of Security job at TRW in Torrance, CA, and became the Reagan campaign’s National Security Advisor. Upon returning to CIA as the boss, Casey discovered that his people were constantly on the phone leaking to the Washington Post. He wasn’t getting the information he needed to run the Company. So Casey started his own private CIA within the White House run by Oliver North and Fawn Hall. That led to disaster.
Kash has to find a way to throw off the Slow Walk and the Raincoat if he’s going to really run the FBI.
The former Kash seemed free to be boldly transparent and that set his image.
POTUS was not seen checking his opinions, nor Ours, among MAGA who appreciated his opinions and statements, because he was on the same long time page as we.
Was POTUS unaware, or raincoating those opinions?
The contrast has been striking to see Kash made quiet, and only since Pam stumbled, is he peeping a bit more.
POTUS, otoh, was seen vigorously defending Pam, who has never “read a room” with any charisma in her entire professional life. Imo.
You put it well with the history of “raincoating”.
The term lends to my opinion, for closing down DC FBI & possibly the Big DC Justice Complex.
It’s as watching Bondi and Patel being somewhat “raincoated” by POTUS seemingly detached from both.
Supposedly, POTUS will not be firing Anyone in his administration, who would then be free to go out and cause him more problems, in the Party, etc., and would profit for doing so.
Why not just do a raincoat shuffle? Just as he did with the goofy replacement of Stefanik, making the stupid guy in his cabinet the US Ambassador.
Looks like rewarding the incompetent or careless, but it’s a really a measure of least resistance— self-preservation for keeping the peace, internally, on the hill, etc.
Conjecture here, of course.