Loading
THE LASTFBINBCDEIUS Your browser does not support the element. time the Senate formally rejected a president’s cabinet nominee came in 1989 when John Tower, George H.W. Bush’s nominee for defence secretary, was denied because of his boozing and womanising. Time may be linear but politics is cyclical. The next entry in this ledger could well be , Donald Trump’s choice for defence secretary, because of his boozing and womanising.Although afflicted with similar vices, the two men differ in their qualifications: Mr Tower was a former senator rebuked by his former colleagues; Mr Hegseth was, until recently, a Fox News anchor with no government experience (though he is a decorated veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). Republican senators, who will control the chamber by a margin of 53-47, are very much minded to give Mr Trump the cabinet he wants. But they seem unwilling to overlook grievous flaws.The first warning signs for Mr Hegseth emerged shortly after Mr Trump announced his nomination. It came to light that in 2017 a woman that Mr Hegseth had sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in California. Mr Hegseth later paid a settlement in a confidential agreement; he has denied all wrongdoing. Still, the news was an unwelcome revelation for Mr Trump’s transition team, who were, until very recently, forgoing the usual process of having nominees vetted by the .Republican senators were discomfited by it, too, but seemed as if they could have been mollified. They had already handed Mr Trump the embarrassment of one nomination setback. , a former congressman from Florida chosen to be attorney-general, withdrew from contention after it became clear his own improprieties would make him impossible to confirm. The Republican senators, who are keenly aware of whom their voters would choose in a conflict between themselves and Mr Trump, did not especially want to anger the president-elect any further.Unfortunately, the bad news continued to come in. On November 29th the reported the contents of an email that his own mother had sent him amid divorce proceedings with his second wife (Mr Hegseth had fathered a child out of wedlock with his current spouse). “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote. In a clean-up television interview, she pleaded for senators to confirm her son, saying she had written the message in anger and haste.Then on December 1st, the published an investigative article documenting, among other things, allegations of alcohol abuse that wrecked Mr Hegseth’s leadership of two non-profits “dedicated to supporting veterans”. On December 3rd alleged that Mr Hegseth had billed hotel rooms used for his affair with his future second wife to his first wife’s credit card. On the same day news published a story relying on anonymous sources in Fox News who said that they worried about Mr Hegseth’s drinking and smelled alcohol on him as recently as a month ago. The Trump transition operation has dismissed this reporting as false.Already there are signs that Republican senators are contemplating defection. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina and a close ally of Mr Trump’s, called the reporting “disturbing” and said that defending the nomination was “going to be difficult”. Only four dissenting Republican senators would be sufficient to torpedo Mr Hegseth’s bid. And despite his public pronouncements of support, Mr Trump’s own patience may wear thin as even more stories are published.Should Mr Hegseth make it to confirmation hearings (he has vowed to fight on and told Republican senators that he would not drink on the job), they would be a circus. Not only would his personal life be raked over; his previously expressed views on military matters would also be subject to strict scrutiny.Take his recent comments on the “Shawn Ryan Show”, a podcast, a week before he received Mr Trump’s nod. He argued that the American military had been intentionally enfeebled by its embrace of (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives (“by ideologues who want to bring a meritocracy to heel”); that women were unfit for combat roles (“I’m surprised there hasn’t been blowback on that already…because I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles”); and that investigations of war crimes hindered American troops (“these are rules written by dudes in cloakrooms in Europe after World War I because they thought they could fight polite wars in the future”).Mr Hegseth is a polished communicator. But he may still find himself squirming at a televised senatorial skewering. “He’s just got to go through the vetting process and withstand what I’m sure is going to be a very interesting murder board in the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Senator Thom Tillis told reporters. That was before all the subsequent scandals broke.Though Mr Trump is inclined to dismiss the mainstream media, all this has had an effect. Both and the have reported that the president-elect is considering nominating Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as defence secretary instead.
