Reading news stories about the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, I was struck by the irrelevance of most of the debate, focused largely on the claim that he drank to much, was unfaithful to his wife, treated women badly.
I've never voted for Trump, and I might not support changes in Dept of Defense policy that DJT wants, but rejecting a nominee because he would implement changes ordered by the Chief Executive is arguing with the wrong people. The anti-Hegseth partisans' argument is with the electorate which picked Trump. Presidents are entitled to have cabinet members who agree with their policies, AEBE.
Absolutely agree, even when the appointments are people I wouldn't want to be in place. I think this is a pretty common view.
I do think that there's a lot of room for disqualifying people, though. Incompetence, treason, unreliability, or even possibly something like a bad personality that's more likely to cause harm to the position (someone with a well established history of staff turnover and bullying, for instance). I also think that these are mostly common views.
The end result is that the Democrats (and Republicans when in reverse) try to make the argument seem like it's about the second category instead of the first. There's no incentive for people to be honest about their true objections.
Why? Would you rather have government services produced by someone who is virtuous or by someone who is competent?
Sometimes virtue is relevant, but not always. If someone makes passes at women he isn't married to that might be a reason for women who don't want passes to avoid being alone with him, but it's relevant for the job only if it actually interferes with doing it.
I agree that things that are not relevant should not be a consideration in choosing someone for public office. But I can't help but think that aspects of character may influence how someone goes about his or her job. If so, although I accept that too much of the questioning focused on his character, doesn't that mean that his character defects are not entirely irrelevant? And, if that's right, doesn't it also mean that some of such questioning was relevant to his suitability for the position?
I agree, but what aspects are relevant and in what way probably depends on the position. Being honest, unwilling to lie, is desirable for some jobs, but perhaps not for a diplomat or intelligence official. Having strong moral principles is an admirable characteristic, but some principles may prevent an official from doing his job as the senators confirming him want it done.
Just because you’re competent doing the job doesn’t mean you will do the right action. On the other hand, if you’re virtuous, you will do the right action despite you not doing the job correctly. Public officials are spending other people’s money on other people. If those public officials are competent that doesn’t stop them from using the funds inappropriately.
Competence implies having put in the work to learn competence. Someone who always goofs off or does the wrong thing is less likely to learn competence.
We want both competence and virtue. When in tension (read: always) we have to pick and choose some levels of each. For very high office, a pretty high level of competence is mandatory. Some level of virtue, but not necessarily very high, is also required.
There's also the question of which kind of virtue. For a SoD, virtue in his official duties would be very important. Virtue in his home life not as much (though not zero, of course).
And there's the reality that we know lots of officials are not faithful to the wives, use government services for personal gain, etc. Some of this is impossible to fully prevent, even if it were a high goal. JFK had affairs at the White House, which is several layers of unethical, but we don't tend to look back at him very harshly for it. Do we want to be harsher to people whose indiscretions are known, even if the same as others? There's pros and cons with that - knowing about it and accepting it may lead to a slippery slope and further acceptance, but making "not knowing" a requirement just makes people hide things better and results in more coverups. A no-win situation.
Raising a single arm at a straight line is an extremely common gesture that pretty much everyone makes. How much it looks like a Nazi salute is always going to be a losing argument for everyone involved. Even real actual Nazis saluted in a variety of ways, some of which were clean and crisp and some of which were not. If you include all the variations then likely every politician in history has done it at some point.
Ultimately I agree with David that you have to look for other, more direct, evidence. He could have made it exceptionally clear that he was making a Nazi salute by saying even a few words (and 100% certain if he threw in a Heil Hitler). The motion was close enough to the actual thing that if he meant to show Nazi sympathies there would have been ample opportunity to do so. Even in the dog whistle sense he could throw out whatever the numbers are, 14 or 18 or whatever. I also agree with David that he was most likely trolling on purpose to get an outsized reaction. I happen to think that's dumb, and even for trolling purposes would have much preferred he do something like the OK symbol. A lot more plausible deniability. Just say something like "we're going to make this country A-OK!" or something while making the sign. The trolling level there would have been much richer, I think.
I agree that Pete Hegseth's drinking and infidelity were secondary issues, distractions from the less-exciting issues of financial mismanagement and lack of managerial experience. I definitely wanted to hear more in the press and the confirmation hearings about his actual policy beliefs and plans (the questions he was asked revealed an astounding lack of background knowledge for the job). But the drinking and infidelity _are_ real issues for someone in his position: if he's drunk when a military crisis arises, or if he does something that makes him vulnerable to blackmail by foreign agents, or if the drinking and physical abuse indicate a general lack of self-control, those are national security threats.
Again, Trump picked somebody like himself: somebody with little regard for what most of us would consider "decency" or "honesty", somebody who places a high priority on sounding tough, somebody who sees every job as an opportunity for his own personal enrichment, and (as with several of his other cabinet nominees) somebody with Sunday-morning-talk-show looks and TV experience.
Among the people who have pointed out how unqualified Hegseth is by relevant standards, is George Will. He's more fun than the Guardian. Beyond that, it is hard to see why one would spend a lot of time quibbling with the assessment that Hegseth is a disgusting individual who doesn't belong in a top government job. Comparing him to Grant is less egregious than comparing Trump to Vaclav Havel (Douglas Murray in a delusional post at the Free Press) by a lot but it also begs the question what for.
The context for Lincoln's famous line about Grant was that Grant was succeeding. By contrast, Hegseth's drunkenness led to failure and gross mismanagement: $434,000 in unpaid bills, credit-card debt of near $75K, and only a thousand dollars in the bank--at Veterans for Freedom, the first organization he ran--despite millions in donations.
I agree that the question of whether Kavanaugh tried to rape Ford when they were both in high school was not particularly illuminating about his current beliefs, behavior, or judicial temperament.
But his _response_ to the accusation _was_ relevant to his judicial temperament: he dismissed it angrily as pure fiction constructed by a vast partisan conspiracy against him. No sympathy that she had been through something traumatic (whether rape or not, whether from him or not), no acknowledgment that something might have happened that the two of them interpreted differently, no apology for anything he might have done that could be taken the wrong way. He treated her purely as an enemy to be beaten and discredited, not as a fellow human being. Is that what you want to see in a judge?
I assume this is because that's what Trump would do, and he needed to retain Trump's support more than he needed to treat another human being with decency and respect. To earn Trump's support, you have to retaliate against all attacks tenfold, take no prisoners, admit nothing, seek out and escalate conflicts so you can visibly win them. But his angry and repeated claims of being personally the victim of a vast Democratic-party conspiracy made it hard to imagine him ever ruling fairly on a case involving partisan politics. (Which presumably is the main reason Trump nominated him.)
Alternatively, if he knew it hadn't happened, he concluded that she was inventing the story for the obvious political motive, which seems like a good reason to treat her as an enemy.
I don't know if you followed my link, but I estimated that there were about 150,000 women in the area who were high school students when he was and so could tell the same story with the same plausibility. Perhaps 50,000 of them would have been opposed to his appointment. Any one woman would be unlikely to make up such a story, but one in 50,000 might well be.
I'm not making any assumptions about whether she actually had been through such an event, or whether she had imagined the whole thing, or even made it up on the prompting of a vast Democratic conspiracy. My comments above have nothing to do with what actually happened fifty-mumble years ago, only with how Kavanaugh reacted at his confirmation hearing.
How would I have reacted in Kavanaugh's place, based on the information available to him (assuming charitably that he really didn't try to rape her)? I probably would have said something like "I don't remember the episode you describe, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do what you describe, but it sounds like a horrible experience. If I did anything to cause that experience, if I ever did anything to give you the impression I was trying to force you into sex, I sincerely apologize. Nobody, especially not a teenaged girl, deserves to go through that."
I'm not the most tactful or sensitive guy around, but I think that response would be infinitely more respectful and sensitive than what Kavanaugh actually said. It might even have gained him a Democratic vote or two. But it would have cost him the respect of the person who really mattered, Donald Trump. And if you already know you're going to be confirmed because a Republican bare-majority are with you, getting an extra Democratic vote or two is pointless — indeed, it might make you look less like the partisan and combative figure Trump took you for when he nominated you.
It doesn't take a vast Democratic conspiracy, just a single partisan willing to make up the story, perhaps the assistance of one more willing to say she told her about it in the past.
I have no first hand experience of such a situation but he might well have believed that the sort of apologetic response you suggest would make people more willing to believe her story.
So what? The literal truth of her story wasn't going to be proven or disproven anyway; as you point out, people on both sides had already decided whether they thought it was true based on partisan priors.
The sort of apologetic response I suggest would have lowered the temperature, moved the accusation into "we'll never know exactly what really happened that night, we all made mistakes as teenagers, but we're older and wiser now" territory, and shifted the discussion to his recent judicial history.
Instead, Kavanaugh chose to lash out against a vast Democratic conspiracy (1), thus making the whole hearing about Ford, her allegations, her own history, and partisanship, all of which should have been less relevant than his recent judicial history. (Hmm... was that an intentional distraction?)
Not that it much mattered what the hearing was about, since he was basically guaranteed confirmation by the Republican Senate majority, as long as Trump was on his side.
(1) His precise words included "grotesque and coordinated character assassination", "conspiracy to do me in", and "a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups".
No, I don't assume anything about what she had _actually_ been through. But one can express sympathy for somebody's reported experience, even if it turns out to have been hallucinated. Indeed, a hallucinated experience can be every bit as terrifying as a real one. And what would it have cost to offer that sympathy? In this case, it would have cost "looking tough and combative", which is what Trump wants in all his nominees.
That said, Ford did _testify under oath_ about her traumatic experience, so I would start with the Occam's-razor assumption, absent evidence to the contrary, that she was telling the truth as she saw it.
Which brings us back to David's Bayesian argument that Ford's accusation was only weak evidence that the episode actually happened. And indeed, she might have had an incentive to lie. But Kavanaugh had a much stronger incentive to lie — his own lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court was on the line — so his denial is even weaker evidence that it didn't happen.
The point isn't that she had an incentive to lie but that there were tens of thousands of women with that incentive any one of whom was in as good a position as she was to tell the lie, and it only takes one. But I agree that his incentive to lie was much stronger than the incentive of any one woman, so we have no way of knowing what really happened.
But what if, as he contended, neither she nor he was at that party in the first place? Saying anything remotely like "If I did anything to cause that experience..." leaves the door wide open for the hostile opposition to claim that he feels guilty and admitted he was there.
Her actual claim included no dates or times, not even which year, no location or any other identifying information outside of a broad geographical area and a multi-year range of possibilities. How does one respond to that without sounding callous? The best he might be able to do is something like "If something happened...sorry you experienced that..." Which sounds pretty mushy and necessarily non-committal. He would not have fared any better in the partisan press or with the people who already made up their minds. And that's a far less direct rebuttal than saying "We never met, at a party or otherwise" and making it clear that whatever did or did not happen to her, he wasn't involved.
If there were no dates or places, he can’t possibly know that he “wasn’t at that party”, much less that she wasn’t.
He could reasonably say “I don’t remember ever meeting you at a party, much less doing what you describe, but I went to a lot of parties and met a lot of teenaged girls; you might have been one of them. I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried to rape you or anyone else, but if I ever did anything that you perceived that way, I’m sorry.”
The above does NOT indicate that he “feels guilty and admits he was there”, and nobody could possibly read it that way. It indicates that two people’s fifty-year-old memories disagree, which should be no surprise to anyone. It de-escalates the situation, rather than escalating by calling her a partisan liar and part of a vast Democratic conspiracy to destroy him.
What could his “partisan opponents” say to this? “I choose to believe her uncorroborated memory over his uncorroborated memory”? Ok, you can do that, but it’s not a strong logical argument. And his expression of sympathy would make it harder for them to demonize him as a partisan bully.
Do you not remember the national conversation about this? Based purely on her completely non-specific story, half the country raged against him and called him a rapist. That's with him saying that he never met her and was never around her. Do you really think him leaving an opening for "maybe I did meet you, sorry if I offended you if I did" wouldn't open him up to even more attacks?
IIRC the situation was only resolved at all because he kept his calendars from then and was able to show from original evidence that for a multi-year period it was not possible for him to have been at any parties that matched any of the possible range of dates that matched her story. If he didn't have those calendars then he might not have been confirmed, despite how empty of facts her story was.
Trump wanted Hegseth because he thinks he'll be compliant (Hegseth rabidly supports Trump's election-denialism), not to undo progressive policies. Policies don't interest Trump, fealty does.
Fealty is the main reason, but another (bad) reason is that Hegseth looks good on TV. Telegenics was also a consideration for Pam Bondi (another loyalist, who refused to admit to Senators that Biden won the 2020 election).
As for the alcohol abuse, the issue is that Hegseth will be in charge of one of the largest and most complicated bureaucracies in the world while his prior experience shows that he abused alcohol on the job to such an extent that he was forced to step down from positions of responsibility.
A 2015 whistleblower report "describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity--to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's [Concerned Veterans of America's] events."
And yet not really relevant. Many greats to including Churchill were drunk as a skunk on duty. Plenty of people perform great, even superior, intoxicated. We have defined "abuse" to mean "drunk" in modern woke America and they aren't synonyms.
It is true, however, that more consideration should have been paid to his total lack of knowledge of America's geostrategic situation. Pay more attention to what a Republican, Mitch McConnell, had to say:
"The United States faces coordinated aggression from adversaries bent on shattering the order underpinning American security and prosperity. In public comments and testimony before the Armed Services Committee, Mr.
Hegseth did not reckon with this reality.
"President Trump has rightly called on NATO allies to spend more on our collective defense. But the nominee who would have been responsible for leading that effort wouldn't even commit to growing America's defense investment beyond the low bar set by the Biden Administration's budget requests.
"In his testimony before the Committee, Mr. Hegseth provided no substantial observations on how to defend Taiwan or the Philippines against a Chinese attack, or even whether he believes the United States should do so. He failed, for that matter, to articulate in any detail a strategic vision for dealing with the gravest long-term threat emanating from the PRC.
"Absent, too, was any substantive discussion of countering our adversaries' alignment with deeper alliance relationships and more extensive defense industrial cooperation of our own."
That's as good an analysis as any political decision. What gets votes? — whatever the public wants. Policies don't interest any politician except as they are connected to votes.
I agree that personal failings like infidelity or heavy drinking in someone’s private life may not be especially relevant to whether he can perform effectively as Secretary of Defense. If Hegseth occasionally, or even frequently, drinks too much in his private life, that’s arguably his own concern—at least as long as we can make sure that any crisis that might involve the Department of Defense will fall during normal working hours in the Eastern Time zone. I also agree that his statements about Old Testament principles and how he agrees that homosexuals should be put to death do not, by themselves, prove he would advocate this in his new role.
If he has a history of drinking in the workplace or showing up intoxicated, that’s seems relevant to me. Leading the Department of Defense is kind of an important role, and an ongoing pattern of impaired judgment or reliability could be considered a little bit of a red flag.
I am curious why you don’t consider Hegseth's desire to ban all women from all combat roles relevant to evaluating his fitness. Disqualifying half the population arbitrarily, rather than on objective performance standards, seems inefficient. Wouldn't it reduce the talent pool for roles that many qualified women could fill and, by extension, weaken our military effectiveness? If Hegseth announced he’d bar all men under 5'5" from combat—again, an arbitrary standard with no clear performance basis—I suspect you might consider this concerning. The same logic applies to excluding women categorically.
In short, I agree that personal moral failings can be red herrings in a confirmation debate, but workplace misconduct and stated policies that affect force readiness and morale do matter. Those factors—drinking on duty (if substantiated) and his willingness to exclude women from combat—speak more directly to whether he can do the job well.
I understand the limitation on women in combat roles to be about things other than potential physical fitness for some women (honestly, a vanishingly small number) who can meet the requirements. The old requirements for an all-male fighting force excluded a good number of men (intentionally) and almost all women. In order to get a non-negligible number of women into these roles, the standards had to be dropped significantly.
Beyond that, having a mixed sex fighting force makes war much more complicated - separate facilities, men doing dumb stuff to save or impress the women, pregnancies, lots of issues.
If women really could make up half of the (higher standards) fighting force, it may make sense to figure these things out. But it doesn't make any sense for the military to put a lot of time and effort keeping a fighting force in top shape and include women for a small minority. Similarly, transgender individuals who have to take maintenance drugs should not be permitted in the military. It's the same reasoning that says anyone else taking maintenance drugs can't be - it lowers our military effectiveness and serves no military purpose.
Since you indicated that a "vanishingly small number of women" meet the physical requirements for combat roles, I would guess your definition is more correlated with special operations (Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.), which have enhanced physical requirements, than traditional combat roles, such as combat support. Combat support roles, such as drone operators, often need to be in the field, rather than behind the front lines, and yet their contribution to lethality and survivability often has little correlation with extreme physical prowess.
Unless technology stops advancing, it would seem that combat support roles are going to be increasing in number.
Do you have any evidence that the US has dropped its standards significantly so that women qualify? Do you believe that the men who would do "dumb stuff to save or impress the women" are who we should be designing our fighting force around? Do you have evidence that the integration of women into the military has degraded it?
I think your threshhold of women making up half of the fighting force in order to a make it economical to accomodate any gender specific needs is rather arbitrary. What if women, who met the objective qualifications, could make up ten percent of the fighting force? Would that be too small a group to try to accomodate? Are you trying to draw a distinction between hormone blockers and other prescription drugs? Should we exclude people with very poor vision from combat roles because they need contacts or glasses? Should we exclude people who require statins, blood thinners, thyroid medications, antidepressents, etc. from combat roles? All of these require additional support.
I believe that there are plenty of smart, talented women, some of whom may be able to meet the stringent requirements of special operations forces, most of whom cannot, but many of whom can contribute positively in combat roles, and I think that if we exclude, from consideration, half of the population, for these roles, we will end up with a weaker military.
> What if women, who met the objective qualifications, could make up ten percent of the fighting force?
Well, it's academic since the percentage is significantly less than one percent
> I believe that there are plenty of smart, talented women, some of whom may be able to meet the stringent requirements of special operations forces, most of whom cannot, but many of whom can contribute positively in combat roles,
Sounds like you've confused recent Hollywood movies about kick-ass women with reality.
Even assuming the falsehoold of the sexual assault claim, "I let my alcoholism get me into a situation where I had to give in to blackmail" doesn't really scream "competence."
There is no evidence of alcoholism that I have seen. Alcoholic and drunk aren't synonyms. Plenty of people get drunk seven days a week, no negative life impact of import, and can stop tomorrow, they just come from a drinking culture whereas my ex can't even take NighQuil without going on a three day bender. They aren't the same thing.
Assuming that we're not just arguing over the definition of "alcoholism," I'd say the "drinking got me into a situation where I had to give in to blackmail" part is one of the pieces of evidence.
Then there's his public admissions of using alcohol as a "coping mechanism/self-medication."
And his resignation from a non-profit after the board leaned on him regarding his "drinking problem."
Some of his friends say he "doesn't have a drinking problem." Others say he's talked with them about his "struggles" with drinking.
Whether or not he's an alcoholic isn't a hill I'd die on. If you want to say he's just a "drunk" or just has a non-alcoholism "drinking problem," sure, I can buy that and tentatively admit to using imprecise shorthand.
So let me modify that shorthand: There are eleven diagnostic criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder per DSM-5; more than two of those criteria being met are diagnostic for the disorder. By my count, his public statements and known actions display AT LEAST four of the eleven.
Setting aside formal diagnostic stuff, it's really pretty simple: If I know a guy has been successfully blackmailed and at least partially attributes that to his drinking, and still drinks, I'm not going to hire him for a position where him getting blackmailed could be very bad for ME.
Credit where it's due, the street lamp's originally a Pat & Mike Irish joke. Too bad ethnic humor's on the outs now, we all need to be able to laugh at ourselves as well as each other.
Why David I've heard that Pat and Mike joke numerous times over the last seventy years and retold it with some amusement myself a few times. Why yes I assume it to be the original version, and contend the 1924 Bostonian was Pat; https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/11/better-light/
The street lamp story, I first encountered in an Akbar and Birbal story, as a child. Where did you find that story? It's such a frequently useful analogy :).
Akbar and Birbal are iconic figures in Indian history and folklore.
Birbal, born Mahesh Das, became one of Akbar's "Navaratnas" (Nine Jewels) due to his sharp intellect and humor.
Their stories often highlight Birbal's cleverness in advising Akbar, such as exposing corruption or solving riddles. These tales are pooular among children.
There are many Akbar stories. The ones that make him look bad were censored when I was growing up. The Birbal ones were allowed :).
What I learned as an adult once the censorship in general somehow wore off : Akbar was an interesting thinker and dangerous emperor. He even founded his own religion as he didn't quite like his own. He ran scientific experiments on children by isolating them for years (they could only see a mute caregiver) to see if they acquired language. For some reason, the left in India adores him.
You might find the Akbarnama, a contemporary account of his court, interesting. It includes, among many other things, instructions for distilling alcohol, using a low tech method I had previously seen in a "how to stay alive in the woods" style book. One reason to try to created his own hybrid religion.
Agreed. Thanks for that. Your perspective is much appreciated. But, even though I try to read your posts consistently, I can’t recall what you’ve said about the economic effects of immigration by low-skilled laborers. It seems like something you’ve weighed in on. Can you link to that?
I don't get it what's wrong with having a preference that a rapist shouldn't be in government (and in fact should go to jail first before they're accepted elsewhere in society)
Neither Hegseth nor Kavanaugh was shown to be a rapist. The fact that someone can be accused of attempted rape long ago with no evidence is not a good reason to keep him out of government.
On the other hand, I believe the fact that Hegseth committed adultery was admitted.
The Kavanaugh allegation was about two possibly-drunk teenagers, fifty-mumble years ago, and I agree that that doesn't tell us much useful about who either of them is today. There were other credible allegations of Kavanaugh doing similar things in college, but IIRC nothing more recent than that.
The Hegseth allegations are much more recent and ongoing. As with Kavanaugh, lots of different people reported Hegseth frequently drinking to excess, either passing out or physically abusing women. Several different women reported this abuse in recent years; at least one accusation was serious enough that he paid her $50,000 to shut up about it (including a legally-binding promise never to testify against him about it in public, which is why we didn't hear from her directly). At the very least, it suggests that we should demand evidence that his drinking is under control before confirming him to run the Defense Department.
Which claims against Kavanaugh were "credible"? As I mentioned above, even the core claim that was considered the *most* credible of the group didn't involve a specific year, date, day of the week, or location. That doesn't meet my definition of "credible."
I mean we can have a preference heterosexuals shouldn't be in the government too and yet it's not really relevant to can they do their job. When you eliminate people for qualities that are completely irrelevant to their performance, you are back to a mediocracy where what matters is virtue signalling. I'd prefer competency myself.
I've never voted for Trump, and I might not support changes in Dept of Defense policy that DJT wants, but rejecting a nominee because he would implement changes ordered by the Chief Executive is arguing with the wrong people. The anti-Hegseth partisans' argument is with the electorate which picked Trump. Presidents are entitled to have cabinet members who agree with their policies, AEBE.
Absolutely agree, even when the appointments are people I wouldn't want to be in place. I think this is a pretty common view.
I do think that there's a lot of room for disqualifying people, though. Incompetence, treason, unreliability, or even possibly something like a bad personality that's more likely to cause harm to the position (someone with a well established history of staff turnover and bullying, for instance). I also think that these are mostly common views.
The end result is that the Democrats (and Republicans when in reverse) try to make the argument seem like it's about the second category instead of the first. There's no incentive for people to be honest about their true objections.
Shouldn’t we hold our politicians and public servants to a higher standard in terms of virtue?
Why? Would you rather have government services produced by someone who is virtuous or by someone who is competent?
Sometimes virtue is relevant, but not always. If someone makes passes at women he isn't married to that might be a reason for women who don't want passes to avoid being alone with him, but it's relevant for the job only if it actually interferes with doing it.
I agree that things that are not relevant should not be a consideration in choosing someone for public office. But I can't help but think that aspects of character may influence how someone goes about his or her job. If so, although I accept that too much of the questioning focused on his character, doesn't that mean that his character defects are not entirely irrelevant? And, if that's right, doesn't it also mean that some of such questioning was relevant to his suitability for the position?
I agree, but what aspects are relevant and in what way probably depends on the position. Being honest, unwilling to lie, is desirable for some jobs, but perhaps not for a diplomat or intelligence official. Having strong moral principles is an admirable characteristic, but some principles may prevent an official from doing his job as the senators confirming him want it done.
Just because you’re competent doing the job doesn’t mean you will do the right action. On the other hand, if you’re virtuous, you will do the right action despite you not doing the job correctly. Public officials are spending other people’s money on other people. If those public officials are competent that doesn’t stop them from using the funds inappropriately.
Competence implies having put in the work to learn competence. Someone who always goofs off or does the wrong thing is less likely to learn competence.
We want both competence and virtue. When in tension (read: always) we have to pick and choose some levels of each. For very high office, a pretty high level of competence is mandatory. Some level of virtue, but not necessarily very high, is also required.
There's also the question of which kind of virtue. For a SoD, virtue in his official duties would be very important. Virtue in his home life not as much (though not zero, of course).
And there's the reality that we know lots of officials are not faithful to the wives, use government services for personal gain, etc. Some of this is impossible to fully prevent, even if it were a high goal. JFK had affairs at the White House, which is several layers of unethical, but we don't tend to look back at him very harshly for it. Do we want to be harsher to people whose indiscretions are known, even if the same as others? There's pros and cons with that - knowing about it and accepting it may lead to a slippery slope and further acceptance, but making "not knowing" a requirement just makes people hide things better and results in more coverups. A no-win situation.
The Babylon Bee has an interesting take on Nazi salutes.
https://babylonbee.com/news/superman-under-fire-after-hundreds-of-images-surface-of-him-giving-nazi-salute
Raising a single arm at a straight line is an extremely common gesture that pretty much everyone makes. How much it looks like a Nazi salute is always going to be a losing argument for everyone involved. Even real actual Nazis saluted in a variety of ways, some of which were clean and crisp and some of which were not. If you include all the variations then likely every politician in history has done it at some point.
Ultimately I agree with David that you have to look for other, more direct, evidence. He could have made it exceptionally clear that he was making a Nazi salute by saying even a few words (and 100% certain if he threw in a Heil Hitler). The motion was close enough to the actual thing that if he meant to show Nazi sympathies there would have been ample opportunity to do so. Even in the dog whistle sense he could throw out whatever the numbers are, 14 or 18 or whatever. I also agree with David that he was most likely trolling on purpose to get an outsized reaction. I happen to think that's dumb, and even for trolling purposes would have much preferred he do something like the OK symbol. A lot more plausible deniability. Just say something like "we're going to make this country A-OK!" or something while making the sign. The trolling level there would have been much richer, I think.
I agree that Pete Hegseth's drinking and infidelity were secondary issues, distractions from the less-exciting issues of financial mismanagement and lack of managerial experience. I definitely wanted to hear more in the press and the confirmation hearings about his actual policy beliefs and plans (the questions he was asked revealed an astounding lack of background knowledge for the job). But the drinking and infidelity _are_ real issues for someone in his position: if he's drunk when a military crisis arises, or if he does something that makes him vulnerable to blackmail by foreign agents, or if the drinking and physical abuse indicate a general lack of self-control, those are national security threats.
Again, Trump picked somebody like himself: somebody with little regard for what most of us would consider "decency" or "honesty", somebody who places a high priority on sounding tough, somebody who sees every job as an opportunity for his own personal enrichment, and (as with several of his other cabinet nominees) somebody with Sunday-morning-talk-show looks and TV experience.
Among the people who have pointed out how unqualified Hegseth is by relevant standards, is George Will. He's more fun than the Guardian. Beyond that, it is hard to see why one would spend a lot of time quibbling with the assessment that Hegseth is a disgusting individual who doesn't belong in a top government job. Comparing him to Grant is less egregious than comparing Trump to Vaclav Havel (Douglas Murray in a delusional post at the Free Press) by a lot but it also begs the question what for.
The context for Lincoln's famous line about Grant was that Grant was succeeding. By contrast, Hegseth's drunkenness led to failure and gross mismanagement: $434,000 in unpaid bills, credit-card debt of near $75K, and only a thousand dollars in the bank--at Veterans for Freedom, the first organization he ran--despite millions in donations.
Those things are relevant, the drunkenness itself isn't. Some people get drunk without it significantly hindering their job performance.
How does one know the allegations are true?
I agree that the question of whether Kavanaugh tried to rape Ford when they were both in high school was not particularly illuminating about his current beliefs, behavior, or judicial temperament.
But his _response_ to the accusation _was_ relevant to his judicial temperament: he dismissed it angrily as pure fiction constructed by a vast partisan conspiracy against him. No sympathy that she had been through something traumatic (whether rape or not, whether from him or not), no acknowledgment that something might have happened that the two of them interpreted differently, no apology for anything he might have done that could be taken the wrong way. He treated her purely as an enemy to be beaten and discredited, not as a fellow human being. Is that what you want to see in a judge?
I assume this is because that's what Trump would do, and he needed to retain Trump's support more than he needed to treat another human being with decency and respect. To earn Trump's support, you have to retaliate against all attacks tenfold, take no prisoners, admit nothing, seek out and escalate conflicts so you can visibly win them. But his angry and repeated claims of being personally the victim of a vast Democratic-party conspiracy made it hard to imagine him ever ruling fairly on a case involving partisan politics. (Which presumably is the main reason Trump nominated him.)
Alternatively, if he knew it hadn't happened, he concluded that she was inventing the story for the obvious political motive, which seems like a good reason to treat her as an enemy.
I don't know if you followed my link, but I estimated that there were about 150,000 women in the area who were high school students when he was and so could tell the same story with the same plausibility. Perhaps 50,000 of them would have been opposed to his appointment. Any one woman would be unlikely to make up such a story, but one in 50,000 might well be.
You're assuming she *had* been through a traumatic event. You'd already made up your mind.
I'm not making any assumptions about whether she actually had been through such an event, or whether she had imagined the whole thing, or even made it up on the prompting of a vast Democratic conspiracy. My comments above have nothing to do with what actually happened fifty-mumble years ago, only with how Kavanaugh reacted at his confirmation hearing.
How would I have reacted in Kavanaugh's place, based on the information available to him (assuming charitably that he really didn't try to rape her)? I probably would have said something like "I don't remember the episode you describe, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do what you describe, but it sounds like a horrible experience. If I did anything to cause that experience, if I ever did anything to give you the impression I was trying to force you into sex, I sincerely apologize. Nobody, especially not a teenaged girl, deserves to go through that."
I'm not the most tactful or sensitive guy around, but I think that response would be infinitely more respectful and sensitive than what Kavanaugh actually said. It might even have gained him a Democratic vote or two. But it would have cost him the respect of the person who really mattered, Donald Trump. And if you already know you're going to be confirmed because a Republican bare-majority are with you, getting an extra Democratic vote or two is pointless — indeed, it might make you look less like the partisan and combative figure Trump took you for when he nominated you.
It doesn't take a vast Democratic conspiracy, just a single partisan willing to make up the story, perhaps the assistance of one more willing to say she told her about it in the past.
I have no first hand experience of such a situation but he might well have believed that the sort of apologetic response you suggest would make people more willing to believe her story.
So what? The literal truth of her story wasn't going to be proven or disproven anyway; as you point out, people on both sides had already decided whether they thought it was true based on partisan priors.
The sort of apologetic response I suggest would have lowered the temperature, moved the accusation into "we'll never know exactly what really happened that night, we all made mistakes as teenagers, but we're older and wiser now" territory, and shifted the discussion to his recent judicial history.
Instead, Kavanaugh chose to lash out against a vast Democratic conspiracy (1), thus making the whole hearing about Ford, her allegations, her own history, and partisanship, all of which should have been less relevant than his recent judicial history. (Hmm... was that an intentional distraction?)
Not that it much mattered what the hearing was about, since he was basically guaranteed confirmation by the Republican Senate majority, as long as Trump was on his side.
(1) His precise words included "grotesque and coordinated character assassination", "conspiracy to do me in", and "a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups".
Here's what I read and responded to: "No sympathy that she had been through something traumatic".
How else is one to read it? You assume she had been through something traumatic.
No, I don't assume anything about what she had _actually_ been through. But one can express sympathy for somebody's reported experience, even if it turns out to have been hallucinated. Indeed, a hallucinated experience can be every bit as terrifying as a real one. And what would it have cost to offer that sympathy? In this case, it would have cost "looking tough and combative", which is what Trump wants in all his nominees.
That said, Ford did _testify under oath_ about her traumatic experience, so I would start with the Occam's-razor assumption, absent evidence to the contrary, that she was telling the truth as she saw it.
Which brings us back to David's Bayesian argument that Ford's accusation was only weak evidence that the episode actually happened. And indeed, she might have had an incentive to lie. But Kavanaugh had a much stronger incentive to lie — his own lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court was on the line — so his denial is even weaker evidence that it didn't happen.
Correct.
The point isn't that she had an incentive to lie but that there were tens of thousands of women with that incentive any one of whom was in as good a position as she was to tell the lie, and it only takes one. But I agree that his incentive to lie was much stronger than the incentive of any one woman, so we have no way of knowing what really happened.
But what if, as he contended, neither she nor he was at that party in the first place? Saying anything remotely like "If I did anything to cause that experience..." leaves the door wide open for the hostile opposition to claim that he feels guilty and admitted he was there.
Her actual claim included no dates or times, not even which year, no location or any other identifying information outside of a broad geographical area and a multi-year range of possibilities. How does one respond to that without sounding callous? The best he might be able to do is something like "If something happened...sorry you experienced that..." Which sounds pretty mushy and necessarily non-committal. He would not have fared any better in the partisan press or with the people who already made up their minds. And that's a far less direct rebuttal than saying "We never met, at a party or otherwise" and making it clear that whatever did or did not happen to her, he wasn't involved.
If there were no dates or places, he can’t possibly know that he “wasn’t at that party”, much less that she wasn’t.
He could reasonably say “I don’t remember ever meeting you at a party, much less doing what you describe, but I went to a lot of parties and met a lot of teenaged girls; you might have been one of them. I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried to rape you or anyone else, but if I ever did anything that you perceived that way, I’m sorry.”
The above does NOT indicate that he “feels guilty and admits he was there”, and nobody could possibly read it that way. It indicates that two people’s fifty-year-old memories disagree, which should be no surprise to anyone. It de-escalates the situation, rather than escalating by calling her a partisan liar and part of a vast Democratic conspiracy to destroy him.
What could his “partisan opponents” say to this? “I choose to believe her uncorroborated memory over his uncorroborated memory”? Ok, you can do that, but it’s not a strong logical argument. And his expression of sympathy would make it harder for them to demonize him as a partisan bully.
Do you not remember the national conversation about this? Based purely on her completely non-specific story, half the country raged against him and called him a rapist. That's with him saying that he never met her and was never around her. Do you really think him leaving an opening for "maybe I did meet you, sorry if I offended you if I did" wouldn't open him up to even more attacks?
IIRC the situation was only resolved at all because he kept his calendars from then and was able to show from original evidence that for a multi-year period it was not possible for him to have been at any parties that matched any of the possible range of dates that matched her story. If he didn't have those calendars then he might not have been confirmed, despite how empty of facts her story was.
Trump wanted Hegseth because he thinks he'll be compliant (Hegseth rabidly supports Trump's election-denialism), not to undo progressive policies. Policies don't interest Trump, fealty does.
Fealty is the main reason, but another (bad) reason is that Hegseth looks good on TV. Telegenics was also a consideration for Pam Bondi (another loyalist, who refused to admit to Senators that Biden won the 2020 election).
As for the alcohol abuse, the issue is that Hegseth will be in charge of one of the largest and most complicated bureaucracies in the world while his prior experience shows that he abused alcohol on the job to such an extent that he was forced to step down from positions of responsibility.
A 2015 whistleblower report "describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity--to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's [Concerned Veterans of America's] events."
And yet not really relevant. Many greats to including Churchill were drunk as a skunk on duty. Plenty of people perform great, even superior, intoxicated. We have defined "abuse" to mean "drunk" in modern woke America and they aren't synonyms.
Churchill is a good example that hadn't occurred to me.
It is true, however, that more consideration should have been paid to his total lack of knowledge of America's geostrategic situation. Pay more attention to what a Republican, Mitch McConnell, had to say:
"The United States faces coordinated aggression from adversaries bent on shattering the order underpinning American security and prosperity. In public comments and testimony before the Armed Services Committee, Mr.
Hegseth did not reckon with this reality.
"President Trump has rightly called on NATO allies to spend more on our collective defense. But the nominee who would have been responsible for leading that effort wouldn't even commit to growing America's defense investment beyond the low bar set by the Biden Administration's budget requests.
"In his testimony before the Committee, Mr. Hegseth provided no substantial observations on how to defend Taiwan or the Philippines against a Chinese attack, or even whether he believes the United States should do so. He failed, for that matter, to articulate in any detail a strategic vision for dealing with the gravest long-term threat emanating from the PRC.
"Absent, too, was any substantive discussion of countering our adversaries' alignment with deeper alliance relationships and more extensive defense industrial cooperation of our own."
That's as good an analysis as any political decision. What gets votes? — whatever the public wants. Policies don't interest any politician except as they are connected to votes.
I agree that personal failings like infidelity or heavy drinking in someone’s private life may not be especially relevant to whether he can perform effectively as Secretary of Defense. If Hegseth occasionally, or even frequently, drinks too much in his private life, that’s arguably his own concern—at least as long as we can make sure that any crisis that might involve the Department of Defense will fall during normal working hours in the Eastern Time zone. I also agree that his statements about Old Testament principles and how he agrees that homosexuals should be put to death do not, by themselves, prove he would advocate this in his new role.
If he has a history of drinking in the workplace or showing up intoxicated, that’s seems relevant to me. Leading the Department of Defense is kind of an important role, and an ongoing pattern of impaired judgment or reliability could be considered a little bit of a red flag.
I am curious why you don’t consider Hegseth's desire to ban all women from all combat roles relevant to evaluating his fitness. Disqualifying half the population arbitrarily, rather than on objective performance standards, seems inefficient. Wouldn't it reduce the talent pool for roles that many qualified women could fill and, by extension, weaken our military effectiveness? If Hegseth announced he’d bar all men under 5'5" from combat—again, an arbitrary standard with no clear performance basis—I suspect you might consider this concerning. The same logic applies to excluding women categorically.
In short, I agree that personal moral failings can be red herrings in a confirmation debate, but workplace misconduct and stated policies that affect force readiness and morale do matter. Those factors—drinking on duty (if substantiated) and his willingness to exclude women from combat—speak more directly to whether he can do the job well.
I was including his view of women in combat roles in the anti-woke issues which is one of the things worth arguing about.
I understand the limitation on women in combat roles to be about things other than potential physical fitness for some women (honestly, a vanishingly small number) who can meet the requirements. The old requirements for an all-male fighting force excluded a good number of men (intentionally) and almost all women. In order to get a non-negligible number of women into these roles, the standards had to be dropped significantly.
Beyond that, having a mixed sex fighting force makes war much more complicated - separate facilities, men doing dumb stuff to save or impress the women, pregnancies, lots of issues.
If women really could make up half of the (higher standards) fighting force, it may make sense to figure these things out. But it doesn't make any sense for the military to put a lot of time and effort keeping a fighting force in top shape and include women for a small minority. Similarly, transgender individuals who have to take maintenance drugs should not be permitted in the military. It's the same reasoning that says anyone else taking maintenance drugs can't be - it lowers our military effectiveness and serves no military purpose.
Since you indicated that a "vanishingly small number of women" meet the physical requirements for combat roles, I would guess your definition is more correlated with special operations (Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.), which have enhanced physical requirements, than traditional combat roles, such as combat support. Combat support roles, such as drone operators, often need to be in the field, rather than behind the front lines, and yet their contribution to lethality and survivability often has little correlation with extreme physical prowess.
Unless technology stops advancing, it would seem that combat support roles are going to be increasing in number.
Do you have any evidence that the US has dropped its standards significantly so that women qualify? Do you believe that the men who would do "dumb stuff to save or impress the women" are who we should be designing our fighting force around? Do you have evidence that the integration of women into the military has degraded it?
I think your threshhold of women making up half of the fighting force in order to a make it economical to accomodate any gender specific needs is rather arbitrary. What if women, who met the objective qualifications, could make up ten percent of the fighting force? Would that be too small a group to try to accomodate? Are you trying to draw a distinction between hormone blockers and other prescription drugs? Should we exclude people with very poor vision from combat roles because they need contacts or glasses? Should we exclude people who require statins, blood thinners, thyroid medications, antidepressents, etc. from combat roles? All of these require additional support.
I believe that there are plenty of smart, talented women, some of whom may be able to meet the stringent requirements of special operations forces, most of whom cannot, but many of whom can contribute positively in combat roles, and I think that if we exclude, from consideration, half of the population, for these roles, we will end up with a weaker military.
> What if women, who met the objective qualifications, could make up ten percent of the fighting force?
Well, it's academic since the percentage is significantly less than one percent
> I believe that there are plenty of smart, talented women, some of whom may be able to meet the stringent requirements of special operations forces, most of whom cannot, but many of whom can contribute positively in combat roles,
Sounds like you've confused recent Hollywood movies about kick-ass women with reality.
Even assuming the falsehoold of the sexual assault claim, "I let my alcoholism get me into a situation where I had to give in to blackmail" doesn't really scream "competence."
There is no evidence of alcoholism that I have seen. Alcoholic and drunk aren't synonyms. Plenty of people get drunk seven days a week, no negative life impact of import, and can stop tomorrow, they just come from a drinking culture whereas my ex can't even take NighQuil without going on a three day bender. They aren't the same thing.
Assuming that we're not just arguing over the definition of "alcoholism," I'd say the "drinking got me into a situation where I had to give in to blackmail" part is one of the pieces of evidence.
Then there's his public admissions of using alcohol as a "coping mechanism/self-medication."
And his resignation from a non-profit after the board leaned on him regarding his "drinking problem."
Some of his friends say he "doesn't have a drinking problem." Others say he's talked with them about his "struggles" with drinking.
Whether or not he's an alcoholic isn't a hill I'd die on. If you want to say he's just a "drunk" or just has a non-alcoholism "drinking problem," sure, I can buy that and tentatively admit to using imprecise shorthand.
So let me modify that shorthand: There are eleven diagnostic criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder per DSM-5; more than two of those criteria being met are diagnostic for the disorder. By my count, his public statements and known actions display AT LEAST four of the eleven.
Setting aside formal diagnostic stuff, it's really pretty simple: If I know a guy has been successfully blackmailed and at least partially attributes that to his drinking, and still drinks, I'm not going to hire him for a position where him getting blackmailed could be very bad for ME.
Fair
Credit where it's due, the street lamp's originally a Pat & Mike Irish joke. Too bad ethnic humor's on the outs now, we all need to be able to laugh at ourselves as well as each other.
How do you know that's the original version?
Why David I've heard that Pat and Mike joke numerous times over the last seventy years and retold it with some amusement myself a few times. Why yes I assume it to be the original version, and contend the 1924 Bostonian was Pat; https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/11/better-light/
;-)
The street lamp story, I first encountered in an Akbar and Birbal story, as a child. Where did you find that story? It's such a frequently useful analogy :).
I don't remember. It shows up in lots of places.
Is Akbar the Mughal emperor? Who is Birbal?
Akbar and Birbal are iconic figures in Indian history and folklore.
Birbal, born Mahesh Das, became one of Akbar's "Navaratnas" (Nine Jewels) due to his sharp intellect and humor.
Their stories often highlight Birbal's cleverness in advising Akbar, such as exposing corruption or solving riddles. These tales are pooular among children.
Do you know the Kipling poem "Akbar's Bridge"? Good story, but no Birbal.
There are many Akbar stories. The ones that make him look bad were censored when I was growing up. The Birbal ones were allowed :).
What I learned as an adult once the censorship in general somehow wore off : Akbar was an interesting thinker and dangerous emperor. He even founded his own religion as he didn't quite like his own. He ran scientific experiments on children by isolating them for years (they could only see a mute caregiver) to see if they acquired language. For some reason, the left in India adores him.
You might find the Akbarnama, a contemporary account of his court, interesting. It includes, among many other things, instructions for distilling alcohol, using a low tech method I had previously seen in a "how to stay alive in the woods" style book. One reason to try to created his own hybrid religion.
Agreed. Thanks for that. Your perspective is much appreciated. But, even though I try to read your posts consistently, I can’t recall what you’ve said about the economic effects of immigration by low-skilled laborers. It seems like something you’ve weighed in on. Can you link to that?
You can find various things I have written on the subject with:
site:http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ OR site:https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/ OR site:https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/ immigration
I don't get it what's wrong with having a preference that a rapist shouldn't be in government (and in fact should go to jail first before they're accepted elsewhere in society)
Neither Hegseth nor Kavanaugh was shown to be a rapist. The fact that someone can be accused of attempted rape long ago with no evidence is not a good reason to keep him out of government.
On the other hand, I believe the fact that Hegseth committed adultery was admitted.
Two drunk teenagers from how long ago?
The whole story deserved no more credence than anything else involving two drunk teenagers from that long ago.
The Kavanaugh allegation was about two possibly-drunk teenagers, fifty-mumble years ago, and I agree that that doesn't tell us much useful about who either of them is today. There were other credible allegations of Kavanaugh doing similar things in college, but IIRC nothing more recent than that.
The Hegseth allegations are much more recent and ongoing. As with Kavanaugh, lots of different people reported Hegseth frequently drinking to excess, either passing out or physically abusing women. Several different women reported this abuse in recent years; at least one accusation was serious enough that he paid her $50,000 to shut up about it (including a legally-binding promise never to testify against him about it in public, which is why we didn't hear from her directly). At the very least, it suggests that we should demand evidence that his drinking is under control before confirming him to run the Defense Department.
Which claims against Kavanaugh were "credible"? As I mentioned above, even the core claim that was considered the *most* credible of the group didn't involve a specific year, date, day of the week, or location. That doesn't meet my definition of "credible."
I mean we can have a preference heterosexuals shouldn't be in the government too and yet it's not really relevant to can they do their job. When you eliminate people for qualities that are completely irrelevant to their performance, you are back to a mediocracy where what matters is virtue signalling. I'd prefer competency myself.