In an article centered on President Donald Trump (R) centralizing foreign policy in his office, Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and staffer at State, NSA, and Pentagon, had this to say:

This is the most top-down administration in recent memory. This isn’t a staff-driven administration.

And there it is, in so many words. In the particular case, the President of the United States is, by Constitutional design, our nation’s foreign policy chief. The foreign policy-influencing centers in the Executive Branch—State, NSA, et al.—all work for him. And so do those centers’ staffers, albeit through their Department and agency Secretaries and Directors.

More broadly, this is a career government staffer (before joining the left-leaning think tank) decrying the reduction in control exercised by the deep state/bureaucratic state/staffers. He’s an echo of Fiona Hill’s angry objection that earlier-President Trump wasn’t listening to and obeying her ad hoc committee regarding Ukraine.