Congressional hearings are occasions whereby legislators can preen by fomenting their outrage.
A confirmation hearing in the U. S, Senate is a paradoxical and quarrelsome thing. Like other congressional and senatorial hearings, it supposedly is an opportunity to quiz experts or nominees to provide information about their areas of expertise or their own backgrounds and character so as to assist the legislators to make legislative decisions or to consent to confirmations of appointees where confirmation is necessary, though important positions such as a President's chief of staff do not require confirmation. The offices to be covered are enumerated rather than ranked on importance, and Trump thought about avoiding the constitution confirmation process by using interim appointments, but thought better of it. In fact, though, hearings are just ways for congress people to pontificate, to show their own beliefs and to be outraged at the people who show up before them, dismissing rather than considering their points of view.
A good example of senatorial bullying is repeatedly exhibited by John Kennedy of Louisiana, who uses his courtly Southern manner to make sure he pronounces correctly the names of the nominees he will grill and that he has quoted nominee accurately when citing a paper the nominee wrote many years ago that were and remain controversial however much the nominee has modified their positions as when a judicial nominee said in law school many years ago that she had said she was a Marxist when all that meant was that she was working through Marx’s canon in a political philosophy class. Shouldn’t she be familiar with that point of view? Maybe not for some Senators, so it seems. There Is a decidedly anti-intellectual streak in the Senate, or at least so some Senators posture.
Another of John Kennedy’s postures is that he apologizes for having only five minutes to ask questions and so has to cut off people’s answers. It strikes me that as someone not up for a confirmation, which means trying to be polite and providing as little evidence as possible, I might answer to Kennedy that I do not honor his apology on time limits. It is his committee structure that sets the terms of hearings, after all. If you don’t want to let people answer fully, don’t ask them to come.
Kennedy is particularly good at rattling nominees. He is a very well schooled lawyer and in a few legal questions can show a nominee not to know basic things about the law, the nominees retreating to say they had not had to deal with this particular matter in the kinds of cases that have come before him in a minor court. But that gives off that the nominee is not fluent with law in general, something that might be expected of a nominee for the federal bench, what with its lifetime appointments. Kennedy, however, is out of his league when he goes into philosophical issues. He asked one panelist whether there were two or four or six genders. The nominee said she could not answer that question because it was outside her expertise. As a mere observer with no stake in buttering up Senators, I might have said that even though I was not an expert, I would surmise that there seem to be two basic ones but that there are variations which can create some anguish at their alternative assignments and that people in general should exhibit compassion rather than insist that variations in biology do not naturally if infrequently occur. But that would be to one up a Senator on his moral superiority.
Another ploy by Senators is to ask questions where the Senators know the answer just to show their control of the facts. So Kennedy asks about statutes he has consulted and Katie Porter, a Democratic Congresswoman, badgers experts and other witnesses about lots of social statistics of which she knows a bunch so as to humiliate the witnesses, such bullying not limited to Republicans but also Democrats given to badgering because they can do so and because their five minutes are an occasion whereby they can shine rather than illuminate the subject matter or the qualities of the nominee up for confirmation. That happened two days ago when Pete Hegseth was asked how many people were in the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps so as to rattle him about his ignorance and his answers were approximately correct.
The hearing on Hegseth was par for the course. He didn’t get rattled and so Republicans afterwards said that his performance was a triumph, and Democrats said he was evasive, it clear afterwards that the committee would approve his nomination as Secretary of Defense. That is all we wanted to learn from the proceedings. The committee members would tell their own points of view, the real purpose of the hearings rather than revealing something about the nominee, as if a nominee might go berserk and like Claude Rains might break down and admit himself a crook in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington “. No such luck. Consider instead the rather crabbed questions and answers at the Hegseth nomination of a few days ago.
As usual, the Senators, those supposedly asking questions, were the stars of the show. They were using the occasion of a confirmation hearing to announce how they had already decided to vote. The answer was that when it happens, barring some late revelation, the committee will provide a party line vote and so forwarded to the full Senate next week when the question will be whether there are three Republican votes who will brave Trump’s wrath and vote against Hegseth whether because he is a drunk (Sen. John Tower having been defeated by fellow Democrats because of that in 1989) or because he was a womanizer, or too politically incorrect, or my own favorite reason, which is that he has had insufficient experience to lead a nearly trillion dollar agency, the largest of the world with its responsibilities of procurement, personnel management and the “Three A.M.” call about a crisis. One Republican senator asked if some of their own members didn’t also imbibe after hours. My unflattering answer is that Senators can get drunk because all they do is legislate while the Secretary of Defense has a 24 hour, seven day job where he must be clear thinking as soon as he is awakened. So, one after the other, each of the committee members said soon enough that they wanted him or didn’t want him, some engaging in special interests to make their case. Sen. Gilliabrand said in answer to a Hegseth assertion, there were no quotas for gender in military units despite Hegseth saying otherwise. But that was not an occasion to say exactly what were the DEI sanctions which the Republicans thought so pernicious. Are they extreme examples or the usual practice? Aren’t there studies about this?
The abbreviated time for questions (seven minutes) worked to Hegseth’s advantage. He did not have to say much, just something terse and satisfying as when asked about his philandering, a topic that Sen. Kaine was probably assigned to go into, and I hope found to be distasteful because it goes into private matters. Hegseth said that he was reformed thanks to his wife and Jesus Christ, which seemed satisfactory though invoking God can mean invoking his name in vain. The only possible mystery declaration on the panel might have been by Sen. Joanie Ernst, the veteran and survivor of sexual abuse, who was kind to Hegbeth and so telegraphed that she would support the nomination .
Sen. Elaine Slotkin, a newly minted Senator from Michigan with serious military experience, asked a key question: would Hegseth carry out an order to use the military on civilians? Secretary Mark Esper had refused to send troops to control civilians in Washington, D. C. when President Trump asked him to do so during Trump’s first term. Would Hegseth follow Trump’s orders? Hegseth said it was a hypothetical question because PresidentTrump would never do anything illegal, although this question was at the heart of the issue of whether the military is essentially non-partisan.Slotkin was not dealing with personal matters or qualifications but looking forward to the new Administration undermining basic structures in the American government, its laws and customs, and so a danger of colossal importance to the future and so an opening salvo by Democrats on a Trump Administration in what will be a protracted conflict until, I hope, Democrats take over the Congress in the midterms. Slotkin is telling us to beware of what impends.
Another Republican Senator made clear he would support the nomination because of his view that the military had seriously deteriorated under Biden and so had to be restored by an unusual designate, a backhanded acknowledgement that Hegseth did not have the experience of previous secretaries of defense. McNamara had been President of Ford Motors, served in the Pentagon during World War II, and a master of cost accounting which he had applied to the Pentagon during his tenure as Secretary for procurement analysis, however badly it worked out in directing the war on Vietnam. Sec. of Defense Austin had been a high ranking general and Sec. Cohen had for years been a Senator who had decided appropriations for the armed services. The ranks go back to George Marshall who won the Second World War and a predecessor was Secretary of War Knox (which meant the Army) who had been a Republican Vice Presidential candidate before FDR picked him for the post so that the war effort was bi-partisan. What is Hegseth’s claim to fame? Fox News? As a Democratic Senator said, Hegseth is suited to be a press secretary rather than to command the department. Maybe some of those appointed as assistant secretaries will know their stuff but the radical declaration by Trump and his minions is that credentialed expertise is not relevant for high office. That is a conceptual leap difficult for people other than true believers to swallow.