Second, it means that they have something to lose. Why does this matter? First, it means that they have some standing to speak. I could add a note about almost every person on the list, but I’ll just say: in most Republican administrations, you’d expect to see lots of these same names in serious foreign-policy jobs, and many others as part of the informal brains-trust.

So has his successor at DHS, Michael Chertoff. So has Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and first Secretary of Homeland Security under GW Bush. Philip Zelikow, a scholar who was lead author of the 9/11 Commission Report and was State Department counselor under Condoleezza Rice (and whom I’ve come to know as a friend) has signed on. Others have been in and out of academia and government. Trade Representative, Deputy Secretary of State, and then president of the World Bank under GW Bush. Some have had multiple policy positions in GOP administrations: for instance, Robert Zoellick, who became U.S. Some mainly had military, diplomatic, or intelligence careers before rising to senior posts in (mainly) Republican administrations: for instance, John Negroponte, a longtime diplomat who became Director of National Intelligence under GW Bush. If you have followed the ins and outs of foreign policy over the years, you will instantly recognize most of these names, and you will also understand that they are bona fide Republicans and conservatives. Recent examples include: the comment by the incumbent president (Obama) that a nominee (Trump) is “ unfit” to serve the observation by a former CIA head that a foreign government had flattered and conned a nominee and turned him into an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation” and the warning from a former allied Prime Minister that a candidate presents “a serious threat to the security of the west.” It’s one more, and in its way the most dramatic, in the recent series of unusual, “this time it’s different” statements of flat disqualification.

This statement is not part of political-debate-as-usual. And usually these are from people in the trenches of political warfare, not from the career policy-expert class. Election-year rhetoric usually brings statements about candidates who are “wrong” or “unprepared” or “weak” or “bad choices for America” or what have you. Noted as part of the ongoing record, the extraordinary statement signed yesterday by 50 veterans of national-security policy in Republican administrations, arguing that Donald Trump would be “a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well being.” You can read the original document here, and a NYT story about it here.

Why throw away your life so recklessly