The “senior official” of the Trump administration who anonymously wrote a New York Times op-ed to assert that “the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic” is no coward. Indeed, the writer may be a hero.

To be clear, loyalty to one’s employer, especially in politics, is a virtue. In most cases, that loyalty should apply not just during the tenure of employment but forever.

When a person works at a high level for a president, they understand they have been hired to further that president’s agenda — and, in most cases, that includes his political position. The public voted for the president, and the official’s job is to serve the public by serving loyally at his direction. If you’re not rowing in the same direction, then get off the boat.

That’s why, in ordinary presidencies, the honorable thing to do in case of a major clash of agendas, is to resign. A great model thereof was when peacenik Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned from President Jimmy Carter’s administration to protest an armed attempt to rescue hostages held in Iran.

[Read: Here are the Trump officials denying they wrote anonymous New York Times op-ed]

The conceit of this week’s anonymous piece, however, is that this is no ordinary presidency, but instead that President Trump is so extraordinarily bizarre and even dangerous that normal loyalties don’t apply.

“We believe our first duty is to this country,” Anonymous writes, accurately. “That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.” Anonymous also asserts that Trump’s “impulses” are actually “undemocratic,” with “a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.”

Furthermore: “Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

Anonymous, in effect, argues that Trump’s short-term whims and tantrums must be waited out and at least temporarily counteracted in order to stave off disasters that more sober reflection (including by Trump himself) could avoid. Anonymous distinguished those bouts of recklessness from the overall Trump agenda of “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” The writer supports that agenda while saying the internal dissenters “want the administration to succeed.”

In short, the anonymous author claims to be serving the president’s own best interests while saving both the president and, more importantly, the country, from Trump’s own emotional instability.

It is an audacious and arrogant claim. In effect, Anonymous is putting personal judgments of a few senior officials above the judgments of the voters who duly elected this president. Only in the most extreme circumstances should the president’s underlings even consider such an approach.

But an observer can, within reason, imagine circumstances so extreme. In fact, many people who voted for Trump did so knowing of his volcanic nature yet hoping it somehow could be channeled for the better, not embracing that nature but rather reluctantly accepting it as the trade-off for keeping Hillary Clinton from the White House.

Surely, if a president rashly orders the assassination of foreign heads of state (contradicting federal law) or, Lord forbid, a tactical nuclear strike without ample justification, all Americans would want senior officials to slow things down rather than immediately implement those orders.

The question is, are the circumstances indeed so dire? Is there justification for one official or several to stay within an administration to keep reins on an erratic president from the inside, rather than submit very public resignations that air grievances but leave a dangerous president even less internally restrained?

Here, there’s ample reason to believe the claims of Trump’s instability are true. He certainly acts erratically and bombastically in public and on Twitter. Numerous reports from inside the administration have said the same thing, to a wide extent, from the beginning of this presidency. Now we have Bob Woodward’s book describing, in frightening detail, the level of erraticism. While Woodward’s sources also are anonymous, almost all of them reportedly are on audiotape for proof of Woodward’s sourcing.

In short, Anonymous’ claims ring true, and the reasons for wanting to remain unnamed seem legitimate: “to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”

It is obviously impossible to thwart bad impulses if someone no longer holds the job from which he can do the thwarting, much less to advance the president’s worthy objectives if one no longer has an administration perch. Yet, if the situation is so desperate, it’s also important that the public understand the Trumpian danger.

In such circumstances, an observer can understand the choice to write a column of warning, while remaining in an uncomfortable job — trying to implement the policies for which an Electoral College majority voted but keeping a president from cataclysmic actions.

Maybe Anonymous’ choice is wrongheaded. But it’s hardly an act of cowardice. It’s a sincere attempt to serve the country. Americans would do well to stop obsessing about who the writer is, and start considering the information they provided. The picture painted therein, and by Woodward, should frighten everyone, and it should make us want to fix the problem.

Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner, and is the author of “The Accidental Prophet” trilogy of recently published satirical, literary novels.