Trump CEO Strategy Council Is Said to Disband After Exodus

On the one hand, I too would like our leaders to be as informed as possible, to have access to the most expert advisers available, and to have any tools that will aid them in understanding the choices they will have to make. Even the leaders I disagree with. Competence is a nonpartisan value.

On the other hand, advisers are only valuable if their advice is listened to. Past a certain point, one has to cope with the possibility that they aren't actually being called on to advise and inform, but merely to provide a sheen of respectability to whatever the leaders wanted to do in the first place. This is a gradient, not a bright line, but it's still a threshold that can be crossed.

I'd love to be corrected, but I've been paying fairly close attention and I can't think of a single issue, big or small, where this advisory council convinced the president to change his stance. If an advisory body can't do that, then what purpose does it serve?