Title: Thank You For Your Servitude
Rating: 4 Stars
I don’t know, maybe I’m getting over the travesty of the Trump Presidency. I’ve read a couple of other books from that period and they ended up triggering me with rage. This one did not leave me all that angry. Sure, when you read about Lindsay Graham or Ted Cruz as they abandon any principles that they might have ever had to cozy up to power, it’s a bit maddening. Given that, I was not left in a fit of rage.
Perhaps some of this is due to the sardonic attitude of Mark Leibovich. He was also the author of This Town, a piercing look into what passed for Washington DC culture during the Obama administration. As such, he is a decades long denizen of the Washington DC ‘swamp’. In this book he has entire conversations with various subjects about who in Washington DC ‘gets the joke’. To be sure, Leibovich gets the joke and writes about it in a very entertaining fashion.
This covers the period from the campaign through Trump’s Presidency and concluding with the insurrection and the Republican party later attempts to somehow deny that their people had invaded the Capitol to override a legitimate election because their strongman leader told them to.
This is a pretty lightweight book. Its purpose isn’t to dive deep into the madness of the Trump administration. What Leibovich is much more interested in is how Trump managed to subvert an entire cohort of Republican leaders into absolute servitude. Trump managed to do this in two ways.
One way was to bring people into proximity of power that would never, in any other administration, have had that opportunity. Sean Spicer as press secretary. Reince Priebus as chief of staff. Kellyanne Conway as presidential advisor. Hell, Mike Pence as Vice President. This is not exactly the A Team. Knowing that Trump was their one ticket to power, they were willing to countenance any act of self degradation as long as, at the end of it, they could add a line to their resume. Priebus was forthright about it. He would just keep muttering to himself six months. He knew that lasting six months as chief of staff would unlock a lucrative future for him as a DC insider. It was a price he, along with the others of his ilk, was very willing to pay.
The other way was just to overwhelm his opposition. Republican leaders like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Lindsay Graham all started out by denouncing the Trump candidacy. They said the things out loud that needed to be said and, lo and behold, when he became President, they all came to pass. Without exception, their tail curled between their legs, they came back to the fold and pledged complete obeisance to Trump.
Lindsay Graham, a true DC swamp creature, was explicit about it. It seems strange that he ran for President because he seems to be more interested in proximity to power than the actual exercise of power. He nakedly sacrificed all self respect just so that he can play golf with Trump and talk to him on the phone. As far as I can tell, the only reason why Graham wants to be senator is to be a senator. He seems to have no dreams or aspirations beyond that. As he is quoted in the book, “If you don’t want to be reelected, you’re in the wrong business”.
This is not exactly a profile in courage. They all knew (as in, they were ‘in on the joke’) what a nightmare the Trump administration was but they just couldn’t stop worshipping at the Trump altar and run the risk of losing their job title.
Another thing that was interesting to read was how exhausting managing Trump was. Whenever some bad news hit and Trump became enraged, the all hands effort wasn’t to manage the crisis but how to get Trump in a better mood. Apparently Hope Hicks was the master of this. Leibovich was in a meeting with Trump and Hicks where Trump was bragging about his 70% approval rating. Clearly this was bullshit and Leibovich shot a questioning glance at Hicks. She just shook her head slightly. Later, Leibovich found that the 70% approval rating was from a poll taken of just Tennessee Republicans. Anything to keep the narcissist’s appetite fed.
Even so, there was a small number of people that stood up to the onslaught. Nearly all of them faced death threats and most were driven from office. The two most significant politicians calling out the emperor’s nudity was Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney. For their pains, Cheney was driven out of office and now has to have security in her home state of Wyoming, the state that before all of this madness treated her family as royalty. Mitt Romney just averted meeting up with the mob on the day of the insurrection. In addition to death threats, he is regularly publicly accosted by MAGA supporters. It’ll be interesting if he seeks reelection and what will happen if he does.
Here’s the thing. The environment of the DC elite is an inbred, cloven hoofed, cloistered society. No matter what party is in power, these elite feed at the trough. Leibovich himself is an example of the rot. He is the court jester writing at the margins entertaining the mighty and powerful as they frolic. The environment needs to be shaken up if not uprooted.
But it’s clear that the narcissistic, deeply insecure, incoherent, incompetent, lazy, and morally bankrupt Donald Trump was not the antidote. Instead he exposed the absolute venality of an entire generation of Republican politicians and brought into being an entirely new generation made in his own image.
It remains to be seen if the party can be cleansed or if I have to desperately vote Democratic for the rest of my life just to avert disaster.
dorkenstein 