Unless there’s two more Republicans who take the path of Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins and vote against confirming Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, the man could ascend to one of the most powerful positions in the world by the weekend. He won’t cap this off with a celebratory cocktail or five if you believe he will keep the vow he made, if hired, to quit the drinking he claims isn’t a problem.
In the past, every Republican president of the post-World War II era has chosen a Republican to fill the Defense post. Except for one-term Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, every Democratic president has chosen at least one Republican as his Defense chief. Just another example of unilateral bipartisanship.
I’m a far-left yellowdog Democrat, and if I were a senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I would on policy grounds likely vote against most candidates a Republican president would nominate for SecDef. So, under ordinary circumstances, I would fully comprehend why the 14 Republicans on the committee would vote four days ago to approve the choice of a Republican in the White House. However, ordinary circumstances these are not.
Hegseth is no typical Republican candidate for the job who just has some abhorrent political views, although he certainly checks that box in spades, just as Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney did. His personal behavior, as widely recounted by family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, is cringey at best. and should induce shudders in anybody who has to work for him. That, his skimpy—though meritorious résumé—plus his deceptive answers during the committee hearing, show him to be uniquely unqualified and decidely unfit for the job.
The 14 Republicans on the Armed Services Committee know this. And yet every one of them moved him along to the full Senate for a confirmation. In these very unordinary times, this is supremely troubling. Only a craven kowtow to Donald Trump explains it.
Check out Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, for example. Whatever his political views—and they are far from mine—his decades of service in the U.S. Marine Corps and Marine Reserve, and his service in several high-level state and federal government positions, make him qualified to be Secretary of Defense. And, like his fellow veterans on the Armed Services Committee—Roger Wicker, Joni Ernst, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, and Tim Sheehy—Sullivan knows full well that Hegseth isn’t qualified and could be a disastrous choice. But that made no never mind when Sullivan and the rest of them chose to send his nomination to the Senate floor. They know better but they did it anyway. People who do that should be trusted with national defense?
They could redeem themselves today by voting against confirmation. All it would take to squelch Hegseth’s nomination are two more Republican defectors. I won’t make any bets on that happening. While no Republican has a reasonable excuse for voting for this guy, any of the 14 GOP members of the Armed Services Committee who give him a thumbs-up will prove they don’t have the judgment that ought to be required to continue serving there. But, of course, they will continue where they are. And the big media will normalize one more extraordinary abnormality.
You can find me @meteorblades.bsky.social and at The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places.