Bannon has learned he was not indispensable

Most US administrations have had an aide who deemed himself crucial to the president. Steve Bannon was Donald Trump’s, until he had his wings clipped says Elizabeth Drew

IN many, if not most US administrations, some person convinces the press that the US president couldn’t function without him (it’s yet to be a her).

The indispensable aide is one of the most well-worn tropes of the modern presidency. Karl Rove was ‘Bush’s brain’; Harry Hopkins held Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prolific White House team together; Bill Moyers appeared on a magazine cover as ‘Johnson’s Good Angel.’ Without such a figure, or so the story goes, the administration would be a mess.