On the menu today: President Biden finally relents and sends Ukraine some of the best U.S. battle tanks; wondering whether Representative George Santos is performing a service to the rest of the House Republicans by being a media-scrutiny lightning rod; everyone suddenly recognizes that Biden was never all that competent or careful; and Dana Carvey points out the political self-censorship in the modern comedy scene.
For Tank Delivery to Ukraine, Better Late Than Never
The good news is that the logjam is cleared and Ukraine is about to get a whole bunch of new tanks from the West. The U.S. will send “about 30 M1A1 Abrams” tanks, Germany will send 14 Leopard 2 tanks, and Poland submitted a request to Germany to send another 14 Leopards. The British government announced earlier this month that it would send a squadron, or 14, of its Challenger 2 battle tanks.
The slight bad news is that this means the pattern continues. Ukraine asks for a weapons system, the Biden administration and Pentagon initially say Ukraine doesn’t need it or that it isn’t the right choice for the circumstances, the war continues, more Ukrainians die, and then, much later, Biden and the other NATO allies change their minds and agree to send the weapons. As I wrote earlier this month, “The possibility of sending a particular U.S. weapons system to Ukraine is usually considered unwise, unhelpful, and even escalatory and dangerous . . . right up until the moment the Biden administration changes its mind. And then all of a sudden, sending those weapons is absolutely the right thing to do.”
Defenders of Biden will call this “careful consideration.” Critics will call it dithering.
The Strange Case of George Santos
Way, way back in the mid 2010s — a pre-Trump era that might as well be ancient history in U.S. politics — the Obama administration deployed the communications strategy of “stray voltage.” Major Garrett of CBS News laid out the approach in 2014:
This is the White House theory of “Stray Voltage.” It is the brainchild of former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe, whose methods loom large long after his departure. The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness. This happens, Plouffe theorizes, even when–and sometimes especially when–the White House appears defensive, besieged, or off-guard. . . .
As a theory, “stray voltage” exists in a kind of strategic void. It can’t be dismissed or embraced as workable because creating controversy for the sake of controversy is, well, achievable. Like getting soup from the White House mess. It’s also self-reinforcing and internally didactic. Everyone looks around and says, “See. There’s controversy. It’s working.”
There was another electric metaphor thrown around to describe the Obama administration’s approach to managing the news cycle: that of a “lightning rod.” That is, the administration’s critics were always going to complain about something, so the White House might as well keep someone around to be the focus of all that criticism, and to get knocked around like a pinata, while the rest of the administration carried out their agenda with less scrutiny and public attention.
USA Today’s Susan Page laid out that thinking in 2013, pointing to secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius staying in place after the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov:
Whether she is responsible or not, there is little chance Obama would demand or even desire Sebelius’ exit from the hot seat. For a president under fire, having an aide who has become a lightning rod during a controversy in fact can be a useful division of duties. Soon after Sebelius finally left the hearing room, Obama was boarding Air Force One to make a speech about his signature health care law before an audience in Boston.
On any given day, how much news will you hear about Congress? My guess is, unless you’re specifically seeking out such news, not a lot; probably one story, maybe two.
And since the beginning of the year, almost every day, there’s been some bizarre, new, get-a-load-of-this story about George Santos. He allegedly was a drag queen in pageants in Brazil; he claimed to have been targeted by assassins; his mother who allegedly nearly died on 9/11 was living in Brazil at the time; he appears to have been involved in a Ponzi scheme; and an updated campaign-finance report filed yesterday raised new questions about the source of six-figure loans that Santos gave his congressional campaign. We still don’t know where Santos made his fortune; it just seems to have appeared one day from his work at the “Devolder Organization.” In 2019, Santos is on video saying his name is “Anthony Devolder.”
The latest is that Santos’s campaign expense reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission include a slew of charges for precisely $199; campaigns are required by law to keep receipts or invoices for expenses greater than $200. Politico calculated, “FEC data shows more than 90 percent of House and Senate campaign committees around the country did not report a single transaction valued between $199 and $199.99 during the 2022 election cycle. Santos reported 40 of them.”
You can’t begrudge the Washington and New York news media for digging deep into Santos, day after day. A representative whose life story is almost entirely made up is a big story, and there are serious questions about where Santos made his money, and whether someone wealthy effectively bought themselves a new congressman.
You know this story has penetrated beyond political junkies because every late-night talk show has already cast its own impersonator of Santos. Credit Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show for picking the hilarious Jon Lovitz, who created the Pathological Liar character back in the 1980s, as the best. “I’m just in town to pick up my Nobel Peace Prize . . . [then] perform a couple nights at Madison Square Garden. I’ll be performing all my hit songs — ‘Piano Man,’ ‘Hey Jude,’ ‘Happy Birthday.’”
Santos, always focused on the most important issues, hopped on Twitter to denounce Lovitz.
(You could also put personnel fights like House speaker Kevin McCarthy kicking two Democratic members off the House Intelligence Committee as another lightning-rod story. Whether or not Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell gets to remain on the Intelligence Committee matters a lot to Schiff and Swalwell. It doesn’t matter that much to the average American; but grassroots Republicans who remember Schiff promising “ample evidence” of Donald Trump colluding with Russia and Swalwell’s infamous affair with a suspected Chinese spy will be pleased to see them receive some consequences for their wrongdoing.)
Don’t get me wrong; I think Santos ought to go. The argument that his constituents elected him and he ought to stay in Congress until his constituents toss him out glides over the fact that vast swaths of what his constituents knew about him was a pack of lies. When Tulsi Gabbard confronted him about his lies in that Fox News interview, Santos didn’t offer any real accountability or contrition; he hand-waved them away as “mistakes” and accused Gabbard of “nit-picking.” It seems fair to wonder if Santos has lied so habitually that he’s now delusional and believes his own fictions.
But you can see why Kevin McCarthy might find it worthwhile to let the gears of the consequences for Santos turn slowly. A Washington press corps that is obsessed with Santos’s incessant lying and potentially shady connections isn’t spending as much time insisting that the House GOP is the root of all evil. Sooner or later, the consequences of Santos’s voluminous deceptions will catch up to him. But between now and then, he’s a glasses-wearing, nervous-looking lightning rod, and the more lightning that strikes him, the less there is to strike the rest of the GOP House majority.
A Long Run of Oval-Office Disorganization
On the most recent Editors podcast, Charlie made a good point (as he does with metronomic regularity): Biden’s reputation as a wise elder statesman was always shaky, and Afghanistan toppled the facade, but the latest classified-documents mess further proves that his entire campaign argument from 2020 was an illusion. Biden isn’t competent or responsible. He’s not a “grown-up,” the adults are not “back in charge,” and he isn’t bringing a new era of accountability and professionalism to Washington. Biden offers a lot of the same flaws as his predecessor, just with a “D” after his name.
Over at Politico, Jack Shafer notices the same thing:
Wasn’t it supposed to be different? Wasn’t the Biden presidency supposed to mark the return of grown-ups and professionalism to the White House? Weren’t Biden’s hallmarks his pedigree and experience, his competency and diligence? Or, setting aside his deficiencies for a moment, wasn’t Biden supposed to have surrounded himself with an able team of advisers who have been with him for decades, some back to his days in Delaware politics, to guide and protect him? What were they doing to protect Biden when the Very Important Classified Documents bled out to his think-tank office, his garage and his house, and stored for years? Or, are they just as sloppy as Biden and carriers of over-inflated reputations?
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Dana Carvey — perhaps my all-time favorite Saturday Night Live cast member — is willing to say what almost every other comedian isn’t willing to say:
There’s a lot of sensitivity around Biden. . . . Some comedy writers feel they can’t do something that will sabotage their party and let the bad guy get leverage. I don’t think any of this is spoken out loud. It’s just obvious.