Watching the news over the last week was like watching a Marx Brothers movie: zany, madcap, and detached from reality. After a while I was reminded of Groucho’s great line: “Who ya’ gonna’ believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”

It seems everyone is up in arms about the President and his seeming support of Tsar Putin over the intelligence community (IC) assessment that Russia meddled in the US election. Hmmm…

First, meddling. I’m fairly sure the Russians did meddle. After all, they (or their alter ego the Soviet Union) have been meddling in US elections pretty regularly since the 1920s. There was even a case of a (liberal, east coast) US Senator asking the Soviet Union to help him defeat a (conservative) sitting president running for re-election (1984).

But what about the IC? Are we supposed to trust them? Deputy AG Rosenstein reminded one and all that intelligence is “based on evidence.” Indeed it is. And the IC always does present evidence when it makes an argument for this or that point. So, is the president supposed to trust them?

How about a short walk down memory lane?

Should President Truman have trusted the IC when he was told in 1950 that the Soviets were years away from detonating an atomic bomb? Turns out they had detonated one a month before the assessment was presented to Truman.

How about the 1949 IC assessment that the North Koreans wouldn’t attack across the DMZ in 1950?

How about IC (and nearly everyone else in Washington) being convinced that Reagan was going to be duped by Gorbachev and the Soviets? Reagan went with his own assessment, against the IC. And eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. Should he have listened to the IC instead?

Bush (41) was told Saddam wasn’t going to attack Kuwait. He went with the estimate.

Bush (43) was told there was ongoing chemical and biological weapons production in Iraq. He went with the estimate. Is the media recanting its condemnation of the IC in regard to Iraq and now conclude Bush was right in agreeing with the IC estimate? The IC did, after all, present evidence, just as Mr. Rosenstein said.

And what about Obama? Obama was told that Russia was meddling in our election process but chose to do nothing. Did he think the IC was wrong? If not, yet he chose to do nothing, well…

Since WWII every president has, at one time or another, been “bitten” by trusting the IC. And not in minor ways, but in ways that resulted in the nation sending forces into combat.

Intelligence, at least good intelligence, is difficult, and any intelligence organization that is batting above perhaps .600 is probably waiting so long to avoid making mistakes that their assessments are more or less worthless. Trying to accurately assess intent, particularly at the strategic level, is exceptionally difficult; there are going to be errors.

Further, presidents have to make decisions that take into account a wide range of issues. Sometimes what a president must do is not necessarily aligned with the intelligence assessment. And, sometimes presidents make mistakes. No one is perfect.

Meanwhile, perhaps we should remember a few things: unemployment is down to about 4%, the workforce participation rate is climbing for the first time in nearly a decade; the GDP is growing at nearly 3%, the markets are up, the majority of Americans believe the economy is improving and more than half are positive about the future. Government regulations are being cut back, taxes have been cut, businesses are expanding, and the executive has nominated a series of judges to numerous courts who believe they are limited to what the Constitution says.

These are real and positive steps. There’s an old Roman proverb that goes: Acta verum probant – actions prove the man. President Trump may say things that upset folks from time to time, or send out texts that do the same. But his fundamental actions have been sound and productive and good for the long-term health of the nation. More so than those of several preceding presidents.

Maybe what we need is less talk and more action, more hard looks at what is happening, more time focused on what the executive is actually doing, and less time worrying about what people are saying.

Or we may well end up the butt of a vaudeville gag.

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