Sometimes you want to generate both signal and noise.

This is interesting. From From former Trump lawyer, candid talk about Mueller, Manafort, Sessions, Rosenstein, collusion, tweets, privilege, and the press by Byron York. This one piece. The rest is interesting as well but this is the section that caught my attention.

In our earlier talk, Dowd stressed that the Trump White House fully cooperated with Mueller's investigation, and that on more than one occasion Trump instructed Dowd to inform Mueller that the president respected the prosecutor's work. But how could one say Trump fully cooperated when the president was, at the same time, loudly denouncing the probe as a "witch hunt" and a "hoax," and bashing Mueller's prosecutors as "17 angry Democrats"?

The answer lay in Trump's longtime habit of operating on two levels. On the surface, Trump sets off controversies, often using Twitter to say something outrageous that sets the media agenda and leaves some commentators with their hair on fire. At the same time, below the surface, Trump is actually taking steps to get a particular job done.

That was true with the Russia probe. For public consumption, Trump was denouncing Mueller and trashing his team. Behind the scenes, Trump was cooperating and making sure his staff did the same. The Trump White House offered everyone (except, of course, the president himself) to be interviewed, and reams and reams of documents that other White Houses might have withheld on the grounds of executive or other privilege. So Trump simultaneously attacked and cooperated.

Asked about the attacks, Dowd said Mueller understood that Trump had to mount a political defense on the Russia issue. "Bob understood this, it was political," Dowd said. " [Trump] had to handle the political side, and that was his way of doing it with his tweets and his comments ... Bob was a big boy about the political side of it. He understood the president had to address the politics of it. He couldn't just say nothing. People were pounding him about this thing every day, both privately and publicly, and he had to take [Mueller] on."

Last week, working on a variety of topics, I was startled by how effective Trump has been on such a wide range of issues. I am not claiming he is a miracle worker or that all the beneficial outcomes are solely due to his actions. Many of these are issues still in play. Clearly some risks have been taken. And I am well of the bias of the mainstream press that are predisposed to only see failure. . Still . . .

Iran - the sanctions to appear to working towards desired outcomes.

North Korea - a degree of engagement and exploration after years of turning a blind on something that seemed intractible.

China - The trade war appears to be approaching resolution with a beneficial outcome for the US despite temporary disruptions.

NATO - Also appears that the members are finally getting serious about addressing the long known issues of funding and force readiness which everyone acknowledge but none of the foreign policy experts wanted to address.

NAFTA - Also seems to have resolved on beneficial terms and pretty quickly.

US Economy - growing at rates deemed 2-3 years ago to be unachievable.

Tax reform - started and the initial pieces have removed the SALT distortion known about for years.

ISIS - Defeat, at least on a geographical level.

Universities - Changing the tide on universities abandoning due process and free speech.

Judge appointments - Better, faster, and more effective than in the past.

Not everything is sunny. Biggest of all is the mounting national debt which is high on my list of strategic concerns.

But still. On so many issues, you see negative noise at the press level and when you dig into the particulars you find a surprising amount of progress on a wide range of consequential issues.

I did not characterize it in my mind as operating on two levels. My thinking was more along the lines of how Trump has been effective at setting the news agenda regardless of the efforts of his political and media opponents and distinct from his actual actions.

And that is what Dowd is pointing out. It is not accidental. He deliberately works at two levels - one the noise arising from setting the media agenda through outrageous statements in speeches and tweets. Some deliberately controversial. Some just gross exaggerations. Some blatantly untrue.

No accident though. Dowd is suggesting that Trump deliberately generates two pulses. One is white noise or random - that is the bait for getting the mainstream media attention so that they are working his communications agenda. He does that exceptionally well.

But in addition to that noise, he is also generating a very clear signal at the operational level. We don't hear about it because, though not hidden, it is sotto voce.

There is a lot of street fighting over the noise transmission. While that dust-up goes on, the list of consequential accomplishments keeps getting racked up. Or so it appears.