A once-promising politician quickly succumbed to the worst impulses in our civic life. Let removal from office be a chance for him to mature — and to heal.
A once-promising politician quickly succumbed to the worst impulses in our civic life. Let removal from office be a chance for him to mature — and to heal.
I t is tempting to denounce Madison Cawthorn in the aftermath of the North Carolina representative’s recent loss in his Republican primary for the state’s eleventh congressional district. Cawthorn, now 26, was only 24 when he won his primary in 2020, going on to win election that November. Having campaigned for the most part as a new kind of Republican, attempting to capitalize on his youth, he was steadily undone by it, making a series of moral and strategic errors that led to his defeat. His example is instructive, though mostly in the negative. But, for all his flaws, he deserves our sympathy.
The Madison Cawthorn of early 2020 seemed different from the one who lost on Tuesday. His was an inspiring, improbable tale: a promising young man, hoping to serve in the military and enter public service, his life tragically marred by a car accident inducing his paralysis — yet rising, through sheer determination and affability, from his waylaid station to a congressional seat anyway.
His initial public persona, with few exceptions, aptly leveraged this impressive story. And he presented himself as a different kind of Republican. Having defeated the Trump-backed choice in his primary, he was part of a “new generation” of politicians, and urged the Republican Party to speak better on such issues, such as health care and the environment, that mattered to younger voters. “We kept all politics local,” he said on The View, explaining how he won his primary. “We were just focused on caring about the people I want to represent.” To the New York Times, he stressed, “I believe I can carry the message of conservatism in a way that doesn’t seem so abrasive — that has better packaging, I would say, better messaging.” To the Washington Examiner, he said his injury has taught him “something that is . . . absolutely missing in conservative politics. And that is empathy.” It was enough to incline sympathetic observers, such as myself, to take his side against, say, spurious accusations of racism.
More-critical observers could have pointed to warning signs early on. His early presentation of his own life story turned out to be somewhat misleading; he described himself as basically set to attend the Naval Academy before his accident, when in fact he had merely been nominated and not yet accepted (as he later clarified). And in that same accident, he was not “left to die” by the friend he had been driving with, as he once claimed. He was, moreover, dogged by allegations of sexual impropriety from his time at Patrick Henry College, where he eventually dropped out. (Cawthorn disputes the allegations.) And then, when Cawthorn won election to Congress, he celebrated by tweeting, “Cry more, lib.” (He later claimed that, “in the heat of victory,” he had gone too far.) It was certainly more than enough cause for concern.
Cawthorn’s behavior since entering office has largely vindicated initial skeptics. This started with his behavior surrounding Donald Trump’s attempt to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election. Between his December 31, 2020, announcement to contest the election results (his first congressional vote, he noted) and the Capitol riot on January 6, Cawthorn put himself at the vanguard of Republican agitation in this area, going so far as to speak at the pre-riot rally on the National Mall that day. There he called on attendees to “chant so loudly that the cowards in Washington, D.C., that I serve with can hear you,” having tweeted the day before that he would “drag” other Republicans “kicking and screaming back to the Constitution.” Having joined other congressional Republicans in objecting to Arizona’s electoral votes, Cawthorn did not change his mind even after the riot, though he did condemn the rioters themselves. Within a few months, Cawthorn had gone from beating a Trump endorsee to endorsing Trump’s attempted transgression of the constitutional order.
Cawthorn’s public persona didn’t improve much after this. The tone for his term was set early. “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation,” he reportedly wrote in an email to fellow Republicans on January 19, 2021. He chose the kind of performative showboating that blights our politics, refusing to be shaped by the institution to which he belonged, viewing it instead as a platform for his own advancement. This persona is overly represented in our politics today, on both sides of the aisle. So while it is not surprising that he conformed to it instead of to the highest aspirations of congressional behavior, it is unfortunate that someone who sold his youth as an asset pointing toward a new politics instead chose lousy peers and then yielded to a familiarly youthful phenomenon: peer pressure.
There are new (or perhaps simply resurgent) ideological currents roiling conservatism, and the Republican Party by extension. It is possible, and, indeed, important to represent them without damaging our civic order. Which is an additional reason to be dissatisfied with Cawthorn’s conduct. Are there legitimate questions to be asked about U.S. involvement in Ukraine? Yes. Is the Ukrainian government “incredibly evil” and Volodymr Zelensky a “thug,” as Cawthorn contended? No. Is it reasonable for states to end pandemic-era voting accommodations and otherwise reform their voting systems? Yes. Should they do so under the threat of “bloodshed” if they don’t, as Cawthorn insinuated? No. That Cawthorn consistently defaulted to the least persuasive and most inflammatory argument in a given situation suggested not a serious attempt at political engagement over a new set of issues but rather a strategy of hyperbolic self-aggrandizement based on a facile, Twitter-inflected reading of what seemed most au courant.
An examination of even the basic mechanics of his non-ideological conduct in office reveals further defects. A recent Politico profile by Michael Kruse provides a good rundown:
Police stopped him for driving with a revoked license (again). Airport security stopped him for trying to bring a gun onto a plane (again). He made outlandish and unsubstantiated comments on an obscure podcast about orgies and cocaine use by his Capitol Hill colleagues. He called the Ukrainian president a “thug,” he suggested Nancy Pelosi was an alcoholic (she doesn’t drink), and the seemingly ceaseless gush of unsavory news has included allegations of insider trading, pictures of shuttered district offices, a leaked tranche of salacious images and videos, and ongoing proof in FEC filings that he’s a prodigious fundraiser but a profligate spender as well. All of this comes on top of multiple women in multiple places accusing him of sexual harassment, his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6 of last year, his growing catalogue of alarming provocations on social media and on the House floor, and his politically imprudent decision to announce he was switching districts only to reverse course. His marriage amidst all this lasted less than a year.
Much of this, and more, came to light in the aftermath of his infamous comment that his fellow members were involved in cocaine-laced orgies, which seemed to unleash a torrent of opposition research against him. It was a torrent fed, or at least not stymied, by many other Republicans, including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, multiple North Carolina state politicians, and even people who had assisted his 2020 campaign. “It’s definitely a hit job that I’m happy to be a party to,” a veteran North Carolina operative involved admitted to the Daily Beast. This situation arose not because Cawthorn had offended some cocaine-orgy cabal, but because he was rapidly revealing himself to be an uncommitted legislator, a political liability, and an immature youth who had not risen to the seriousness of his office — and would not.
The young man who was once proud to have “kept all politics local” in winning his primary was doomed for having neglected his constituents and for having offended virtually everyone else. Not even a tepid Trump endorsement could save Cawthorn from the fact that his personal conduct and desire for fame had undercut his performance of his actual legislative and constituent responsibilities.
It’s easy and, indeed, necessary to chastise Cawthorn, given this record, and to be glad voters in his district had the good sense to remove him. But in this case, it is not only their good they are serving. Accounts in Politico and elsewhere are not entirely unsympathetic to Cawthorn, nor is this one. Multiple eleventh-district residents believe, with good reason, that Cawthorn suffers lingering trauma, both physical and emotional, from his accident. They speak of curtailed dreams, of crushing realities, of the lived reality of constant pain. It is impossible, given what Cawthorn has gone through, not to have some degree of compassion for him. But his time in office has made it clear that the kind of public celebrity he sought and received would never help him manage or move past what ails him. Such a process is best undertaken away from the public eye, in the company of friends, family, and with whatever care he needs. So far, however, he appears to be choosing a different, more vengeful and bitter path in the aftermath of his defeat.
One can hope that he rejects this path and accepts his humbling as an opportunity for maturation and healing, and wish him well. But one can also hope that the Cawthorn we’ve seen since 2020 is viewed not as a model for the rising generation of politicians, but as a cautionary tale.