Political Opportunists Make This a Silly Season to Remember

Christmas approaches, and with it the silly season in our national politics. At the best of times, the end of the year inaugurates a lull. In an interregnum, that lull becomes a crash. The old president is impotent, the new president is embryonic, Congress is inert, and the press has one eye on the mistletoe. Into this void emerge the cynics and the snake-oil merchants, the dreamers, the circumventers, the guileful peddlers of One Weird Tricks. “If” becomes the mot du jour. “Only,” too. If he, she, they, whoever would only act, sign, impose, declare, then wondrous changes would be afoot. And when better to achieve such reforms than now, when the system is in anticipated flux? “The Constitution,” said Washington in his farewell address, “is sacredly obligatory upon all.” The Hell it is, rejoin the opportunists: Do it — and be legends.

In New York, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has offered up her own contribution to this cycle by attempting to persuade President Joe Biden that he can amend the Constitution on his own. Per the New York Times, Gillibrand’s “mission” is to “convince” Biden that he can “rescue his legacy” by “adding the century-old Equal Rights Amendment . . . to the Constitution.” If that sounds a touch peculiar, worry not your weary head, for, in Gillibrand’s telling, Biden could achieve the outcome with nothing more convoluted than “one phone call.” That this is transparent and embarrassing nonsense — and that it was rejected as such by no less a figure than Ruth Bader Ginsburg — is beside the point. The aim, as so often, is to pretend that the salutary inertia that characterizes so much of American politics is the inevitable product not of our finely tuned Constitution, but of the inexplicable cowardice of those who wield its powers. In reality, the push to codify the Equal Rights Amendment ended more than 40 years ago, when the states’ ratification deadline expired. Its advocates knew this, its antagonists knew this, neutral observers knew this — everyone knew this. At one level, one suspects that Senator Gillibrand knows this, too, but that she also knows how politically efficacious it can be to provide explanations to the public that, as H. L. Mencken had it, are neat, plausible, and wrong.

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

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Christmas approaches, and with it the silly season in our national politics. At the best of times, the end of the year inaugurates a lull. In an interregnum, that lull becomes a crash. The old president is impotent, the new president is embryonic, Congress is inert, and the press has one eye on the mistletoe. Into this void emerge the cynics and the snake-oil merchants, the dreamers, the circumventers, the guileful peddlers of One Weird Tricks. “If” becomes the mot du jour. “Only,” too. If he, she, they, whoever would only act, sign, impose, declare, then wondrous changes would be afoot. And when better to achieve such reforms than now, when the system is in anticipated flux? “The Constitution,” said Washington in his farewell address, “is sacredly obligatory upon all.” The Hell it is, rejoin the opportunists: Do it — and be legends.

In New York, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has offered up her own contribution to this cycle by attempting to persuade President Joe Biden that he can amend the Constitution on his own. Per the New York Times, Gillibrand’s “mission” is to “convince” Biden that he can “rescue his legacy” by “adding the century-old Equal Rights Amendment . . . to the Constitution.” If that sounds a touch peculiar, worry not your weary head, for, in Gillibrand’s telling, Biden could achieve the outcome with nothing more convoluted than “one phone call.” That this is transparent and embarrassing nonsense — and that it was rejected as such by no less a figure than Ruth Bader Ginsburg — is beside the point. The aim, as so often, is to pretend that the salutary inertia that characterizes so much of American politics is the inevitable product not of our finely tuned Constitution, but of the inexplicable cowardice of those who wield its powers. In reality, the push to codify the Equal Rights Amendment ended more than 40 years ago, when the states’ ratification deadline expired. Its advocates knew this, its antagonists knew this, neutral observers knew this — everyone knew this. At one level, one suspects that Senator Gillibrand knows this, too, but that she also knows how politically efficacious it can be to provide explanations to the public that, as H. L. Mencken had it, are neat, plausible, and wrong.