The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

The new book is 'Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead.'

The book doesn't shrink from criticizing past presidents such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

A democracy works best when an electorate makes informed decisions at the ballot box.

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis has been called a warrior-scholar and often likes to refer "to this great big experiment that you and I call America."

Mattis, who left the Pentagon last December after clashing with President Donald Trump over Syria policy, used the phrase in addressing U.S. troops in the field, reminding them of their duty as guardians of the nation's nearly 250-year-old democracy.

It remains Mattis' duty as well.

Returning to the spotlight with publication of a new book on leadership, "Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead," the 69-year-old former Marine Corps general has an obligation to tell American voters about the Oval Office occupant. Specifically, in Mattis' view, is Trump fit to lead? After all, what could be more fundamental to the success of "this great big experiment" than a full understanding of the capabilities of the commander in chief?

But Mattis won't tell us, though his book doesn't shrink from criticizing past presidents such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Even as sources told The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that Mattis found Trump to be "of limited cognitive ability, and of generally dubious character," the general's new book offers only tea leaves: innocuously mentioning Trump just four times, according to an NPR review, and writing that a polemicist is no leader, that tribalism is destructive and that isolationism is dangerous.

The former Pentagon chief says he won't criticize a sitting president, suggesting in The Atlantic interview that any harshness toward Trump would render more difficult the administration's job of "protecting this great big experiment of ours."

That argument pales before a key tenet of the great experiment: A democracy works best when an electorate makes informed decisions at the ballot box.

Perhaps Mattis has nothing new to add about Trump's manifest flaws. But if he does — and in his book, he demonstrates an innate and insightful ability to deconstruct a leader's defects — then to deny that information to the American people makes about as much sense as failing to raise an alarm when your house is on fire.

Mattis remains among the nation's most revered former military leaders, a figure of integrity without a stake in today's bitter climate of partisanship. Americans of all political stripes would benefit from what he has to say, and he hinted in the magazine interview that any period of silence will not be forever.

If he has insights into Trump's way of doing things, for the sake of the American experiment, Mattis should share this before the nation decides on four more years of presidential leadership.

If you can't see this reader poll, please refresh your page.