EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Dear Reader (especially Sean Spicer, who must be the happiest man in the world right now),
I think it was President Eisenhower’s press secretary, James Hagerty, who told White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, “I’m going to gouge out your eyeballs with my car keys and skull f*** you.”
No, no, that didn’t happen. Nor did the vastly cruder scene from the Millard Fillmore administration that I was going to go with instead. It involved the postmaster general, a goat, a White House steward, three farmer’s daughters, and an oak barrel full of axle grease.
I bring this up to illustrate that crude language does not offend me, in the appropriate context. If I’m playing poker, hanging out in my cigar shop (as I am right now), or sitting in a van pulling my ski mask over my face before a heist, I can let the expletives fly. But curse around my kid, or kids in general, and I get #$%^& pissed. And while this has never quite been a family “news”letter, as the hooker said to Elliot Spitzer when he released a kangaroo in a cowboy hat from the hotel closet, there are some lines I will not cross, even here.
My second point is that all of the people freaking about newly installed White House communications director Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci’s language are freaking out about the wrong things. Of course, it was crude and all that. But Tom Bevan is right: Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s “colorful language” was part of his charm, at least according to the White House press corps. Lots of people, including a few presidents, used language that would make Paulie Walnuts wince. I used to work for a former LBJ speechwriter. He used to tell me stories about some of the things Johnson said — and did — with regard to his, well, namesake.
In other words, the cursing is not the issue, it’s the context. I recall some conservatives defending Donald Trump’s tweets at Mika Brzezinski on the grounds that Andrew Jackson had a filthy mouth too. Okay, but he kept the blue talk out of his official statements.
The cursing is not the issue, it’s the context.
The reason why the Scaramucci brouhaha is so dismaying isn’t the less-than-shocking revelation that a guy who refers to himself in the third person as “The Mooch” curses. Nor is it the suggestion that Steve Bannon is one of only a handful of men to master the art of autofellatio (there’s a Wikipedia entry on this topic that I will refrain from linking to, for the children). That bit of rhetorical excess seems the single best illustration to date of the imperative in the Age of Trump to take some statements seriously, but not literally.
Communications Misdirector
No, there are two main reasons the unfolding Scaramucci clown show should arouse concern. The first is that he has no idea what he’s doing and he might just be nuts. This is the White House communications director. But he apparently doesn’t know how off-the-record interviews work. Now, for roughly 99 percent of the American public, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. But, again, he is the White House communications director. I am not ashamed of my ignorance about how to do all manner of things, from how to remove a gallbladder to how to fly a plane. But I expect these skills from surgeons and pilots.
The Mooch also doesn’t seem to grok that a public financial-disclosure form is . . . public. Nor does he know that it’s wrong for him to reach out to his FBI “buddies” in an effort to sic them on fellow members of the White House staff.
Oh, and most communications professionals know that it’s probably a bad idea to explain away your stream-of-consciousness character assassinations with the fact that you didn’t appreciate the fact that journalists are scum:
I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won't happen again.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 28, 2017
Now, as a lifelong anti-Communist — never mind a National Review guy — I am happy to concede that McCarthy was on the right side of the argument. But he undermined the cause by the demagogic and dishonest way he tried to win the argument. He made up evidence, wildly exaggerated, and accused anyone who disagreed with him or his tactics of being traitors. The Left wanted to make any concern about Communist infiltration of the government into a disreputable “witch hunt.” McCarthy helped them make that claim more easily. But the truth is that, despite whatever witch-hunt atmosphere there may have been, there were actual witches to be worried about.
Consider the difference between these two contexts. During the Cold War, the Soviets were determined to overthrow the United States of America, at least in theory. In practice, they were definitely determined to undermine American interests at home and abroad. Treating people who were sympathetic to the Soviet cause — never mind actively engaged in helping them — as less than patriotic is to my mind entirely justified.
But here we have a man who thinks McCarthyite tactics are justified to support Donald Trump. Scaramucci says he’s doing this to advance the “president’s agenda” to make America great again. But it seems more obvious that his first priority is to curry favor with the boss and solidify his own power.
Also, let me just say that loyalty to a person isn’t how we define patriotism in this country. Patriotism is about adherence to ideas and principles. Rich Lowry would be the first to insist it’s also defined as loyalty to historic concepts of nationhood. That’s fine. But it’s not defined by loyalty to man. Not here.
And that brings me to the second reason why this is all so disturbing. Trump apparently approves of what Scaramucci is doing and how he’s doing it.
The Health-Care Debacle
I’m not going to offer a big post-mortem on the kakistocratic cock-up that unfolded yesterday, largely because I did a pre-mortem on Monday and it holds up pretty well. The only thing I’d add is that winning is not a sufficient motivation to win in legislative politics. In sports, winning is its own reward, and all the interests of the players are aligned to that singular goal. Campaigns are more like sports in this regard. Winning the election is the game. But, even here, electoral politics are different than sports in that the team on the field has to convince the people in the stands and watching the game on TV to root for them. Football teams may like a cheering crowd, but the cheers alone don’t put points on the board. Legislative politics is even more different. All Mitch McConnell wanted was a win — defined as checking a box and moving on — and so he focused on process, even as he jettisoned critical points of policy like so much extra cargo in a sinking ship.
All the White House wanted was a win for Trump and so it took no interest in the substance of the legislation. Trump even talked up losing votes like they were a football score (“The vote would have been pretty close to,” Trump said ten days ago, “if you look at it, 48 to 4. That’s a pretty impressive vote by any standard”).
The same goes for large swathes of conservative electronic media, which covered the Republican health-care push like a playoff where the goal was to give either the GOP or Trump a victory rather than as a legislative process that requires selling a program to the viewers at home.
Various & Sundry
Canine Update: I really, really don’t want to jinx anything, but I’m starting to think that Zoë is finally mellowing in middle age. Oh, she’s still known to squirrels as Zoë Bringer of Death and as The Tan Menace to deer. Rabbit moms still tell their babies to finish their carrots or the Dingo might get them. But after many long years of fighting with her to get in the car when called and trying to keep her out of scraps with other dogs, she’s starting to act like, well, a dog and not a half-feral swamp beast.
Even a year ago, if you let her out of the car without her leash, she would likely run up the street to make sure there were no varmint cells in our neighbors back yards. If she chased a deer, I could call for her for 20 minutes before she would emerge from the bush. She still won’t tolerate back-talk from yip dogs and the like, but every day I worry a little less about having to pry some poodle out of her mouth. On the flip side, she’s become much needier for coddling and affection from her humans and much more jealous of the cats and Pippa. Thou shalt pet me first, last, and always is becoming her daily command. We’re trying to disabuse her of that a bit.
The Spaniel needs love (and tennis balls), too. But this is a much better problem to have than having her run into traffic or getting shot for her dingo-ness. And still she maintains her capacity to entertain.
ICYMI . . .
What’s the matter with Democrats?
Trump’s anger at Sessions is misguided.
The Trump administration’s problems start with Trump.
A president can’t pardon himself.
Trump will probably fire Sessions.
Don’t be shocked to find presidents using federal money to coerce.
And now, the weird stuff.
The 25 cutest dogs on Capitol Hill
Miniature dioramas with everyday objects
Wingsuiter crashes through sign in midair at 120 mph
The central mosque in Cologne, Germany
The strange similarity of neuron and galaxy networks (Simpsons did it)
How do professional athletes go the bathroom during games?
Michael Phelps loses race to (CGI) Great White Shark
Truck full of eels overturns in Oregon
Why didn’t Hitler go for the kill at Dunkirk?
Why humans, chimpanzees, and rats enjoy being tickled
The first named person in history was an accountant
Ben Franklin’s proposal to alter the smell of flatulence
Scientific journals publish bogus paper about midichlorians
Would a supervolcano wipe us out?
Giant deep-sea worms may live to be 1,000 years old