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| Pete Hegseth looking combative |
Hint #1: It has little if anything to do with politics. We expect Presidents (and Presidents-elect) to
nominate people who agree with them on relevant issues. Except in extreme cases (an anti-vax
wackadoodle and a snake-oil salesman nominated for health-related positions, for example),
the fact that a Senator would do things differently is, or at least should be, pretty much irrelevant.
Hint #2: It has little to do with what too many Democrats
see as their best strategy, i.e., impugning his character. He’s a mendacious asshole. So what?
If the country cared about that stuff, the guy who nominated him wouldn’t
have received a single electoral vote.
You and I may care, Gentle Reader, but having a twice-divorced, drunken,
philandering, possible rapist in charge of the military seems just fine to a
lot of folks. Besides, all that stuff is
out in the open now, so it’s not like some foreign power could use revelations
of that behavior in some sort of blackmail attempt, right?
Hint #3: It doesn’t have lot to do with his alleged
mismanagement of, and subsequent firing by, two non-profit advocacy groups, Veterans
for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.
(You’d think these folks could get a little ore imaginative with their
titles, wouldn’t you, Gentle Reader?)
OK, one more hint: The reason not to confirm Pete Hegseth is
precisely the reason Republicans support him.
I’m sure you’ve got this figured out by now, Gentle
Reader. The reason not to confirm
Hegseth is that he is spectacularly unqualified for the job. It’s not all the negatives; it’s the utter
absence of any positives. There are, no
doubt, some hard-core Republicans who would be great at the job. But they won’t get nominated because they
might be under the impression that as, say, career officers at the top ranks of
their military branch, they might actually know more about their job than the
blustering buffoon in the White House does.
Can’t have that, can we?
Curmie’s disdain for politicians in general has only grown over the past few days. Senator Kaine can’t think of a better reason to oppose Hegseth than marital infidelity. Senator Warren did a little better, quoting him directly about his assertions that keeping women out of combat positions was a matter of “standards.” But, alas, is too often the case (e.g., Representative Stefanik a little over a year ago), this was more an opportunity to show off for the cameras than ask any real questions.
The
grand prize, however, goes to Senator Schmitt,
who seems to think that Hegseth’s very lack of qualifications for the job is his greatest credential. Oh, and yes,
Gentle Reader, Schmitt is also the guy who provided some visual aids for his
partisan posturing testimony questions… you know, the one
decrying lowered standards while misspelling the word “military.” Standards!
The one breath of hope is that the questioning of Senator Duckworth might be recognized. Hegseth whiffed on
a number of her questions (good summary here),
but here’s the sequence that stands out in Curmie’s mind:
Duckworth: Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations? And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way?
Hegseth: I couldn’t tell the exact number [Duckworth talks over him here. Kinda classless, but…], but I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan, and in Aukus with Australia. We’re trying to work on submarines with them…
Duckworth: Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN.
OK, asking how many nations are in ASEAN is a bit of a
gotcha question, and Duckworth could certainly be accused of disrespecting the
nominee. Still, knowing who is in ASEAN
and what kinds of alliances the US has with even one of them doesn’t seem out
of line. For the record, Gentle Reader,
those nations are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. An 11th country, East Timor, is
set to join soon. There’s a good summary
of why we, and particularly why a Secretary of Defense, should care, here.
Look, Curmie couldn’t have answered that question, either,
and the chances are that neither could you, Gentle Reader. But we’re not candidates for a high-ranking
cabinet position where you need to know that stuff. If Curmie couldn’t tell you the fundamental
difference between Greek and Roman theatre architecture, or describe the signature
event that happened at the Slaviansky Bazaar, or identify at least one of
the founders of the Group Theatre, he couldn’t call himself a theatre
historian.
Similarly, Mr. Hegseth can also be intelligent,
well-educated, and even worldly. But if
he takes three shots at naming an ASEAN country and is wrong every time, he’s
not a legitimate candidate to be Secretary of Defense. Senator Duckworth’s claim that he is “absolutely
clueless” may be a bit harsh, but given the responsibilities of the job, it’s
not inaccurate. She describes her own
thought process thusly: “Over and over again, he said, ‘Oh, I’m not that
experienced, but I'm going to hire people smarter than myself to do this.’ And that the whole day, I was thinking, ‘Then
why don't we just hire somebody smarter than you for the job?’”
That seems reasonable.
Curmie is reasonably intelligent and well-educated; he has never cheated
on his wife, was never drunk on the job, was never accused of rape. He’d still be an awful Secretary of
Defense. So would Pete Hegseth, even if
all those allegations against him are false.
Literally his only credential is that he is ideologically and
temperamentally aligned with the soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief. At least in the abstract, that’s a good
thing, but it isn’t enough. (For the
record, Curmie actually agrees with some of Hegseth’s ideas… not many, but
some.)
There are plenty of conservative men and women who have run
large operations (not with an annual budget of over $800,000,000,000, but
large), who have more than a passing understanding of the way the military
operates at the upper levels, who understand international relations at least
as well as the average undergraduate political science major. Pete Hegseth is not among them.
He should not be confirmed, but he probably will be. That’s because the GOP holds a slight majority
in the Senate, and the average Republican pol is more interested in fellating
(hopefully only metaphorically) Mr. Trump and thereby avoiding (for the moment)
a primary challenge than in actually protecting the country. Sad, but true.
Curmie, alas, is usually right about such predictions, but he’s not infallible. He’d dearly love to be wrong this time.
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