Liz Cheney, deep red Republican, from Wyoming, lost her primary against Harriet Hageman. Hageman was a campaign adviser to Ms. Cheney in 2016, and called Trump the weakest candidate in 2016. Hageman was a Wyoming delegate at the GOP convention in Cleveland and a Ted Cruz supporter. She joined with other Cruz supporters to attempt to force a vote to block Trump’s ascension.
There is a line in “The Best and the Brightest” by David Halberstram about Vice Presidents Lyndon Johnson’s reaction to meeting Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlensinger, Walt Rostow and the rest of Kennedy’s round table. Johnson rushed to tell his friend, Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, of this impressive group.
“Well, Lyndon, you may be right, and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say. But I’d feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for sheriff even once.” Rayburn replied, disabusing Johnson of his tenuous belief.
Hageman did run for Governor of Wyoming in 2018 but was defeated by Wyoming State Treasurer and eventual Governor Mark Gordon. Other than that, her only qualification, besides being a lawyer who had battled the EPA over environmental protections, was an endorsement from former President Trump.
I guess that was enough to get her to the general election. And in Wyoming it will probably be enough to get her elected. She can spend her days mugging for the camera and bemoaning the persecution of the ex-president, which will probably be most of her accomplishments.
Trump got his wish. Cheney is a lame duck congressperson, soon to have a lot of free time on her hands. Free time and a phone full of contacts, friends, and allies that her family has grown and maintained. Plus, she has a seething resentment and hostility for ex-president Trump. It remains to be seen what she can do, however, she is a Cheney, and they are determined. Her dad is still an icon in the hallowed wings of republican mythology. Maybe the party has drifted so far off course, that those things mean nothing. Perhaps, the party belongs to people like Gaetz, Boebert, Greene, and other reactionary obstructionists, whose only priority seems to be attracting attention and inciting outrage.
Biden has been subdued, compared to Trump’s wrath and fury. But he has been in the middle of the action so long he knows how to move legislation. He has been quietly getting things done. Unlike the casual inaction and idle, incessant noise that was the rai·son d’ê·tre of the Trump administration. Infrastructure, health care, climate change, all in two years of steady, constant leadership. No wild condemnation of opponents, no open combat with the press, no steady stream of profane carping and whining and finger-pointing, no late-night tweet storms about the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
It’s trendy and popular to think we need fresh blood, new ideas and thinking. We do, new ideas are essential, but they need to be nursed into being with patience and adult perseverance. It takes a steady hand to make any progress in Washington, probably by design. Patience is a virtue, so is determination. And virtue is what we need in the Oval Office.
I’m grateful for the progress Biden and Harris, two old hands, have made in restoring the nation to a nominal sense of normalcy, if it can ever seem normal that I’m hoping for a Cheney to rise, Phoenix like from the ashes left by the 45th president, to deliver a doomsday like retribution on a reality television “personality.”
It’s time we all take a deep breath, sigh in relief, and do our best to help move the country forward, by electing experienced democrats across the spectrum, school board, city government, county, state, and the houses of congress. We need people who know what to do, and just as important, how to do it.
Vote blue, vote proud, but vote. Not voting is capitulation.
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Tony Webster on Flickr under CC License
