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National Review is Already Tired of Winning
After just over a week of pretending to be pleased about a Republican election victory, National Review sank back, with an almost audible sigh of relief, into the warm embrace of the Deep State.
Mark Antonio Wright, the executive editor at NR, dropped a piece in “The Corner” entitled “If the Senate Wants to Help Trump, It Should Be Ready to Tell Him ‘No’.” Of course, the tactical advice is that “by rejecting Matt Gaetz … and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. … the Senate would be doing Donald Trump a major favor.” Why? Essentially, because Mr. Wright wishes the world was other than it really is. Whether he actually denies reality, too… Well, let’s see.
Mr. Wright acknowledges that “Trump wants to shake up Washington. He ran on that message. He believes in it. He was elected for it.” But – and here the departure from reality begins – “[s]tocking his administration with bomb throwers and cranks will not help Donald Trump.” Instead, he should “seek to nominate cold-eyed operators who know the ins and outs of the departments and agencies that he seeks to reform.” Apparently, there are “plenty of pro-Trump conservatives who fit that description.” Color me, as they say, skeptical.
If we probe more deeply into the worldview of Mr Wright’s piece, however, we begin to see what actually motivates him. These “operators” are “well-respected.” They “build a strategy that goes beyond cable news hits and shock-jock tweets.” What sunk the first Trump administration was “Scandal, chaos and bad headlines.” Mr. Wright’s concern is whether “normies” will “really be pleased by the constant sight of Matt Gaetz on the nightly news.” That is, it’s all surface. It’s not about reality – it’s not about fighting against injustice or ill health or the betrayal of democracy. Instead, it’s about what appears on the nightly news or in the ‘quality’ press.
The game is given away in the penultimate sentence of the piece:
Trump’s best chance to be viewed highly by the American people is to deliver four years of prosperity and sober, conservative government.
I do not think that is in the least bit true. (And I’m pretty sure “the American people” that Mr Wright means here excludes quite a few people living in the icky bits of America, or holding icky views.) But, even if it were, it seems entirely beside the point. Unless one inhabits a world where there are only surfaces (and, let us not forget, those surfaces are created in large part by the enemies of freedom and conservatism), the point of politics really should not be to burnish one’s image.
But I guess that’s much easier than actually, you know, shaking up Washington.
Published in General
This is going to be an interesting dynamic. The Senate, and the entire Congress, will have to strike a balance somewhere between rolling over and reflexive opposition. Whatever that balance, there will be those who find it unacceptable.
I don’t care very much about the Kennedy appointment. Even if he’s a flake (as I think he probably is), a flake who leans toward a less- rather than more-intrusive posture is probably a net positive. The AG is something else: I want a serious house-cleaning by someone who adheres scrupulously to the Constitution. If Gaetz can be that person, fine. If not, if there’s strong reason to doubt that he can approach this critical task with integrity, then I hope the Senate objects and another man is selected.
*Or woman, obviously.)
To tell the truth, I’m not sure what “integrity” means in this context. I think “energy” and “persistence” are the virtues that are required. And perhaps “violence [in the bureaucratic sense] of action”. A bit more shock and awe, a bit less institutional deference, please.
There is an argument to be made that a more “normal” Republican – perhaps a DeSantis or a Rubio rather than a Jeb! or a Romney, of course – would have run the table against the historically bad Kamala, and come out 15 points ahead. (The same argument was made about Trump 1.0 and Hillary.) I’m not sure this is a terribly strong argument, but it’s one that a person of good conscience could make.
If this “normal” Republican had won the primary and the general, then appointing “normal” swamp-dwellers would be a permissible course of action. But they didn’t. Trump won a contested primary. He won the general. He did not hide his bomb-throwers and cranks. He did not run on business as usual. He ran against the swamp. Surely to refuse to even try to govern against it would be a betrayal of his mandate?
But, of course, that seems to be what a lot of people (but not a lot of people on Ricochet, to be fair, and no-one in this comment thread – as yet) actually want. Same old same old.
The scandal and chaos were manufactured. The headlines amplifying the scandal and chaos were published by since-discredited organs of the media.
They are free to try to play that game again, but they’ll need a new playbook.
Pedantic point: It’s not The National Review, but “National Review.”
Semi-more serious point: I tend to agree with Wright. I really don’t know that Gaetz has accomplished anything really useful in his Congressional terms, except bomb-throwing for the sake of bomb-throwing. I think a steely-eyed man or woman who knows how to cut staff, etc., would be a better choice. But I’m also willing to see how the Gaetz pick pans out.
I also think that even when a party controls the Executive and Legislative branches, they are two independent branches. POTUS can accomplish nothing lasting without Congress. It does POTUS well to listen to advice on what & who can make it through the Legislature. Congress has its own powers and privileges which should be jealously guarded. It’s job is not to just roll over for what the POTUS wants, and the country would be better off if each branch protected its own powers.
Or woman. Obviously.
In this context, by “integrity” I mean someone who will act as if he (or she) is on a sacred mission to uphold the Constitution. I want him (or her) to hunt down every individual within the Department of Justice who has abused his (or her) authority and to take him (or her) out back and shoot him. Or her.
Figuratively speaking.
But I want an extremist, someone who is disgusted by corruption and who won’t tolerate it — won’t even tolerate the appearance of it. And I want this merciless Boy Scout (or Girl Scout) to stay entirely within Constitutional bounds while swinging that sword.
I could be wrong, but I’m skeptical that Gaetz is that person, based on what I’ve read. I don’t want a recess appointment. I want the Senate to do its job in this case.
I think Mr Wright is assuming the contrarian editorial role of the semi missing Jason Lee Steorts ( I haven’t seen his by line for a couple of years now). Someone who has a contrarian view to a more populous opinion, writes about it in a turgid manner, but trying to put a patina on what a true conservative should be, without PO’ing too much of the paying membership.
Is Wright one of those guys who 1) hates Trump; 2) opposes everything Trump says and does; 3) opposes the way Trump says and does everything; and 4) despite Trump winning handily, insists that he knows precisely what the country wants and what Trump needs to say and do?
Am I supposed to think that everything and everyone Trump proposes ought to be simply rubber-stamped? I’m not in favor of opposition for the sake of opposition, but neither do I think that thoughtless lock-step agreement is desirable. I don’t disagree with Wright’s column.
But if Gaetz is not confirmed, I doubt it will be because they don’t think he’s tough enough for the job, or whatever.
It may not be Gaetz in the end, but I’m pretty sure that it will be someone who the swamp would say was unacceptable, if Gaetz had not been nominated first.
“Accept Gaetz as AG or I will make him my personal liaison to Congress.”
Pretty much, as long as they meet the standard. The Senate doesn’t get to object because they just don’t like someone’s personality.
And what is that standard? Well, for AG they should be not much worse than Janet Reno, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch or Merrick Garland.
Boy, that’s a pretty low standard. We should look at the worst people who have held a position and then say anybody who is not much worse than the previous worst is good enough? That’s a formula for increasingly worse officials.
No, throw in RFK and that is a very high standard for choosing AGs that will ensure that the President and his policies will survive legal scrutiny.
I am not fan of Gaetz – I do not think he has the qualities, temperament or ability to manage DOJ.
On RKF Jr – I am torn. Not sure if he is best suited for HHS, however, I am reading his book about Fauci, and he understands how the Fauci abused his time at NIAID to create a fiefdom. He knows how the organization works and where the problems are.
Hah! You can’t object to Merrick Garland’s personality because he doesn’t have one!
So there.
I’m willing to tolerate a lot of executive discretion regarding most appointments. I think law enforcement and the judiciary are special, and demand a higher standard. Corrupt cops and judges are particularly odious, and should be vigorously opposed.
They even praised Liz Cheney for her January 6th Committee work . . .
That is a home run of a comment.
Indeed. Why should “the President should get the cabinet he wants” only apply to Democrats?
Do you think that if Joe Biden had nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for HHS, there wouldn’t have been several Republican senators saying, “Hold your horses?”
Maybe. But that would be the opposite situation. Let the Dims oppose RFK and Gaetz and Gabbard and the others, if they want. “Our side” should support them.
And it’s not like any of Trump’s nominees are on the level that Cruz is dealing with here:
I am only willing to accept this for judicial nominees, due to their lifetime appointment. For the cabinet, I am willing to accept the Demoncrat rule of the “President gets to pick their team”.
Both the Kennedy and Gaetz nominations inspired lifers at the CDC and Justice Department to threaten resigning. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Reformers and managers are rarely the same person. I wouldn’t expect either of them to stay for four years, but, as you say (for Kennedy at least), they know what the problems are. For Step One, that’s more important. It’s probably better, organizationally speaking, to have someone else come in and manage after restructuring. These guys are change agents.
There is a considerable space between rubber stamping and navel gazist, swamp-scented columns about how we would all be better off if Trump was more me-ish.
She was a profile in scurrilage.
Funny title
This video was a trip down Unpleasant Memory Lane,
I remember the back of my head blowing off when Sen Kennedy of Louisiana queried some of these women about their lack of knowledge of basic Constitutional law. They knew absolutely nothing about legal issues that first year law students would have down by heart.
Yet National Review wants to show its indie thinking by objecting to Trump’s picks. Where was NR when these women were being voted in by the Dems in Congress?
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Just in passing, I would like to point out that saying that National Review as a whole is anything suggests a homogeneity in the magazines content that just doesn’t exist. I started popping in in the runup to the election because, even though they utterly lost me with the TDS in 2016, I ran across a Jay Nordlinger piece where he was firmly advocating the importance of getting the man elected (before pinging his for his latest lapses in decorum, but Jay’s got to Jay). The magazine is now an eclectic polyglot of views whose Venn Diagram sort of overlaps on center-right, but I think the back and forth of the Corner has seeped into the articles. And it is not a bad thing. Do I want to seize the occasional neocon by the throat and haul him to Zelensky’s Kyiv army recruitment office? My lawyer advises me not to comment. But sometimes we must explore dissonant voices. (Meanwhile, poor Rob had to take a cheap shot against Trump’s level of rhetorical acumen in Martini Shot. He needs more seminarying.)
Now, I start subscribing to the Nation, my brother knows what to do.