#965: Oh What a Week . . .

Without question, the past 168 hours have contained more news stories and headlines of historical importance, drama, tragedy and trepidation than any in recent memory. Some of these stories and headlines concern people, places and events that will be prominently noted in history books so long as people read and write history. Other stories and events will ultimately become nothing more than mere historic asterisks like 3’7” Eddie Gaedel, the smallest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game. (Gaedel, who had signed a one-day contract with the St. Louis Browns, walked on 4 pitches tossed by Detroit Tiger southpaw Bob Cain, and then was pulled for pinch runner Jim Delsing. The only people who remember Gaedel and that August 19, 1951 stunt some 72 after his single at-bat, are undoubtedly the geekiest of baseball aficionados.)

This past week (168 hours) has seen the passing of Dr. Henry Kissinger, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State at age 100. Unlike Gaedel, Dr. Kissinger will be long remembered. (Actually, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State was Judah P. Benjamin, known to many historians as “The Brains of the Confederacy.” The one-time planter, slave-owner, America’s highest-paid attorney and United States senator from Louisiana, Benjamin variously served as Jefferson Davis’ Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State; at war’s end, he wound up his professional life moving to England, where he read British law and rose to become Queen’s Counsel. He is buried at the famed Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, not far from the graves of Jim Morrison, Marcel Marceau and Edith Piaf.)

Without question, Dr. Kissinger was a titan. Over a span of nearly 60 years, he served, advised and counseled 9 different presidents and even more Secretaries of State. Considering the vast differences of these men and women (Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton) in terms of intelligence, experience, worldliness and weltanschauung (world-view), this is a rather remarkable record. On the plus side, Kissinger, perhaps even more than Richard Nixon, was responsible for bringing China and America closer together; back then it was called “Ping Pong Diplomacy. Unquestionably, his biggest, most grievous negative would be the secret bombing of then-neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. During that war, Kissinger and then-President Nixon ordered clandestine bombing raids on Cambodia, in an effort to flush out Viet Cong forces in the eastern part of the country.

It should never be forgotten that the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Cambodia from 1965-1973. (For context, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during the whole of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki.). Until the end of his life, Kissinger maintained that the bombing was aimed at the Vietnamese army inside Cambodia, not at the country itself. The number of people killed by those bombs is not known, but estimates range from 50,000 to upwards of 150,000.

We shall not - G-d willing - see his kind again for a long, long time.

This week also sees the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court. A rancher’s daughter from Arizona, she earned a law degree at Stanford, tried to get a job after the passing the California Bar, only to be told that perhaps she should lower her sights and look for work as a legal secretary. Eventually, she became an icon for future generations of women in the law. A legal conservative - though not as we think of them today, she served during a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket.

Although William H. Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the “O’Connor court,” and Justice O’Connor was referred to, quite accurately, as “the most powerful woman in America.” Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no mere coincidence, given the close attention she paid to current events and the public mood. Among her most important decisions were:

In Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) she said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.
In Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002) O’Connor upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor’s opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) she broke with Chief Justice Rehnquist and other opponents of a woman’s right to choose as part of a 5-4 majority in affirming Roe v. Wade.
In Hunt v. Cromartie (2001) Justice O’Connor affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.

Returning to the land of the living, this past week had bit of a unique first: a televised prime-time “debate” between a sitting governor and presidential candidate and another governor who may become a presidential candidate in another 4 years. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and California’s Gavin Newsom spent their ninety minutes on a well-designed stage taking shots at one another about banning books, who has the greatest tax burden (Florida has no income tax), the price of homeowners insurance (Florida’s is the highest in the nation) and who gets along best with Disney. DeSantis’ major advantage was having Fox News’ Entertainer Sean Hannity throwing him softball question whenever Newsome backed the smaller man into a corner. One positive thing to say about the two: man, do they have great heads of hair!

At one point, as both men were talking over each other and the volume got louder, Newsom played his best Joe Cool imitation, threw his hands open, turned to DeSantis and said with a smile, "Hey, Ron, relax." The one thing DeSantis may have learned from the evening’s 90-minute tussle is that it’s next to impossible to get under the skin of a man who has nothing to lose. As soon as the 90 minutes were up, a panel of Fox hosts spent hours declaring him the obvious and overwhelming winner, while the major cable outlets decided not to report on it until the next day. When they did, a clear majority yawningly gave Newsom a collective thumbs-up.

Donald Trump spent last week further outlining what he has in the works for the next 4 years should he be elected. Besides making personal loyalty to him the key qualification for getting a position in the federal government (hasn’t he ever heard of the Civil Service?) and reversing the “weaponization” of both the DOJ and DOD, the FPOTUS doubled down on his calls to replace the Affordable Care Act, (“Obamacare”) if he’s elected president again. “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a pair of late-night posts on social media.

It seems that he has gotten his hand on an old speech . . . or has forgotten that back when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate they failed to do precisely what he is once again promising to do. Interestingly, only a handful of prominent Republicans have voiced anything even approaching approval of the plan. The reason? The ACA now scores highly with most Americans. As Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., reminded his colleagues just the other day, reopening the ACA fight in 2025 would require Republicans to craft a replacement plan ahead of time, which they have never done.

Over on Capitol Hill, President Biden’s son Hunter played a masterful game of political chess with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which has been misspending tons of time and taxpayer money in their attempt to impeach President Biden. Hunter’s attorneys “castled” Committee Chair James Comer by telling the Kentucky Republican that their client, whom the committee recently subpoenaed (along with Hunter’s former business associate Rob Walker, and the president’s brother James Biden) would be glad to appear . . . but only if the hearings are held in public. Needless to say, Comer, his committee colleagues and a clear majority of the Republican caucus are dead set against the demand. Why? Because the public would quickly learn that when it comes to real, honest to G-d charges against the Bidens, in the immortal words of Gertrude Stein, "There’s no there there.” In a letter to Comer, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell. wrote: “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.” Comer et al realize that Hunter and Abbe Lowell have got ‘em in checkmate. They just cannot abide by it. Of course, this does not mean that they will discontinue the current game of political chess; they’ll likely switch to political checkers. Counselor Lowell, by the way, will be remembered a lot longer than Chairman Comer . . . and for good reason.

We conclude with the one former member of Congress who in future years, like little Eddie Gaedel (number “1/8”) will likely only be remembered by political geeks: the expelled fabulist, George Anthony Devolder Santos. By a vote of 311 (206 Dems., 105 Reps.) to 114 (2 Dems., 112 Reps.), Santos became just the sixth member of Congress to be shown the door . . . and likely the third of this group to wind up being incarcerated. In many regards, Santos is the Platonic Absolute of a MAGAite: venal, hypocritical, mendacious to the max, larcenous, a moral albino (you figure it out) and possessing all 9 signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I mean, lying is one thing in politics. But lying for the sake of Botox, Ferragamo and Hèrmes?

As Vanessa Williams noted in a New York Times essay:

In the end, it may have been the luxury goods that brought down George Santos.

Not the lies about going to Baruch College and being a volleyball star or working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Not the claims of being Jewish and having grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and a mother who died of cancer as result of 9/11. (Not true, it turned out.) Not the fibs about having founded an animal charity or owning substantial real estate assets. None of the falsehoods that have been exposed since Mr. Santos’s election last year. After all, he did survive two previous votes by his peers to expel him from Congress, one back in May, one earlier in November.

I for one am not sure what ultimately brought him down . . . or made enough of his fellow Republicans (though not a majority of them) to finally show him the door. Perhaps it was the looming not-too-distant presence of the 2024 elections; an unvoiced fear of having to answer questions about his presence in their caucus . . . along with questions about their caucus’ all-but-invisible agenda. Under normal circumstances (if they still exist), a disgraced former member of Congress with a penchant for publicity could look forward to eventually making a fortune on Fox, starting his own podcast or radio talk-show, or having a ghost write him a tell-all book while spending his hefty advance on G-d knows what. This probably won’t happen, because soon, he, like his beloved leader, is going to be spending his every waking hour (and what cash he can put his hands on) proclaiming his innocence in federal court.

Who knows: perhaps future generations will remember George Anthony Devolder Santos for having been Donald J. Trump’s cellmate in prison . . .

Oh what a week!