In politics, as in life, little things are often the most revealing. Senate majority leader Trent Lott does lots of big things — chemical-weapons treaties, budget deals, and the like. But it is a little thing — his brief comments responding to reporters’ questions about Air Force Lieutenant Kelly Flinn, just a minute in length — that best illuminates the mindset of the Republican congressional leadership.
What Lott’s remarks reveal is the ascendancy of Clinton and Clintonism. The voice answering the questions is Trent Lott’s, but the sensibility is Bill Clinton’s. The whole manner of thinking — or emoting — that informs Lott’s response is Clintonian. Lott’s answers show that the Republican congressional leadership suffers from more than a failure of strategic intelligence or a loss of political confidence. It has lost its soul.
Let’s deconstruct Sen. Lott’s statement.
1. Lott begins by acknowledging that he doesn’t really know much about the Kelly Flinn case. Does he therefore refrain from commenting? No way. Because (and here is his first Clintonian impulse) one doesn’t need to know much to be “concerned” — indeed to be “very concerned” — about something. In Bill Clinton’s America, political leaders emote, on the basis of vague impressions, and regardless of the damage they might do to institutions, individuals, or the public discourse. In Bill Clinton’s America, politicians show personal empathy. Lott uses the first-person pronoun 19 times in his 20 sentences. Ronald Reagan tried never to use the first-person pronoun in public statements. But Trent Lott’s Republicanism is modeled on Bill Clinton, not on Ronald Reagan. More than anything else, Lott wants to let us know he feels Kelly Flinn’s pain.
2. Lott asserts that Kelly Flinn’s treatment was “unfair.” He provides no evidence for this, and no criteria of fairness. One might think that if Lott doesn’t understand why Flinn is being punished, if he has “lots of questions,” he would refrain from judging the fairness of the Air Force’s proceedings.
But Lott is being disingenuous. He thinks he does understand. And what he thinks he understands — though he doesn’t quite say it, because then it could be judged as a factual claim (another Clintonian device) — is that Kelly Flinn is being punished because she is a woman. For Trent Lott may not know much about this case, but he does know that Republicans suffer from a gender gap. He thinks that the way to close it is to show sympathy for Kelly Flinn. As National Review’s Kate O’Beirne points out, Lott apparently believes that the GOP’s gender-gap problem “will not be solved by appealing to traditional women, who value the virtues that the military (and few other institutions) still demand. Instead, the GOP will be courting feminists.” Lott has internalized a certain view of the gender gap, in which pioneering American women like Kelly Flinn are singled out for persecution by traditional, male-dominated institutions. Call it the Hillary Clinton view.
3. Lott does not simply argue that Kelly Flinn should be treated “fairly.” He thinks “at a minimum she ought to get an honorable discharge.” At a minimum. What does this mean? Nothing. But this device — hyperbole that is at once shameless and meaningless — is truly Clintonian. It is the essence of Bill Clinton’s rhetorical style, and Trent Lott appropriates it effortlessly.
To be fair to Clinton’s administration, though, one ought to note that its actions were more responsible than Lott’s recommendation. Two days later, Bill Clinton’s Air Force secretary denied Lieutenant Flinn’s request for an honorable discharge.
4. Which leads to the issue of respect for institutions, and especially traditional institutions like the military. Nothing is more characteristic of the cultural Left than its willingness to damage important institutions for fleeting political advantage. The gays-in-the-military initiative was emblematic of the early Clinton administration. And it was resented by many Americans — both as a symbolic assault on their mores and for its cavalier disregard for the actual requirements of the military as an institution. Lott’s casual assertion that the Air Force has dealt poorly with the Kelly Flinn case and that the Pentagon is “not in touch” is thus vintage Clintonism. The Clinton administration has learned to muffle this impulse and to respect the interests of institutions like the armed services. Now it is the Republican leadership that shows disdain for the military culture.
5. We come here to the heart of Lott’s complaint: that the military just doesn’t get it. “The Pentagon is not in touch with reality.” “I mean, get real.” This is Trent Lott’s Joycelyn Elders moment. “Get real” means: Give up on traditional moral standards. Thus Lott speaks of “this so-called question of fraternization.” The military’s long-standing rules against fraternization do not address a real problem, it seems, only a so-called one. “Reality” must trump such rules. Contemporary sexual mores are what’s real. The “so-called” Seventh Commandment apparently is not real. Lott must have been pleased to be praised the next day by the New York Times. Presumably he concurs with their view that the military services “need to review their antiquated adultery rules.” In urging the military to “get real,” Trent Lott’s Republicanism is — finally — au courant.
Nothing was more au courant at first than Clintonism. Bill Clinton, however, has evolved. The day after Lott’s statement, the president went out of his way to denounce “heroin chic” fashion advertisements. Drug use is ” real.” Yet Clinton was willing to argue that it “is not good for society to legitimize drug use.” Indeed, a senior adviser at the White House, Rahm Emanuel, explained that President Clinton was concerned about how we shape attitudes. Sen. Lott is concerned about accommodating them.
6. Lott threatens to raise the Kelly Flinn case with the secretary of defense: “If this is not worked out better than it looks like it is going to be worked out, I am going to take it up with him.” Secretary Cohen wasn’t impressed. Not only did his Defense Department resolve the Flinn case differently than Sen. Lott wished, but Cohen then took it upon himself to defend the armed services’ standards against critics like Lott: “There are some who now suggest that the military is preaching Victorian values in the age of Aquarius, that our standards are unrealistic or even undesirable when contrasted with contemporary mores.” Secretary Cohen emphasized that he disagreed, and that he expected the military to “uphold the highest standards of conduct in the world.” Perhaps Sen. Lott will now urge Secretary Cohen to ” get real.”
7. Finally, taking another play from the original Clinton playbook, Lott invokes his wife. “My wife has a good question. Where is the guy involved in this deal?” Now Tricia Lott is an intelligent woman. It is hard to believe that she asked so foolish a question. For the man, Marc Zigo, was of course not in the Air Force. But his wife, Gayla Zigo, was and is. Indeed, the question to be asked is about Gayla Zigo, the wronged woman.
Mrs. Zigo is conspicuously missing from Lott’s remarks. The truth is that Gayla Zigo is probably the type of woman who, in reaction to the first two years of Clinton, went to the polls in 1994 and helped produce a GOP landslide and the first Republican Congress in 40 years. Back then, Republicans sought to speak for the Gayla Zigos of the world. They spoke in defense of family, the military, and morality. Now they have “gotten real.” They have adopted the attitudes of the Clinton administration circa 1993 — long after a wised-up White House came to understand how politically disastrous these attitudes are.
Some observers have wondered whether Bill Clinton’s lasting contribution to American politics will be to define the presidency down. But the presidency will survive Bill Clinton’s tenure. Trent Lott’s comments suggest that Clinton’s effect has already been to induce Republicans like Lott to define Republicanism down.
Will no one step forward to defend the honor of Republican principles and the dignity of the conservative cause? Are we all Clinton Republicans now?
May 20, 1997, media Q&A with Sen. Trent Lott
QUESTION: Senator Lott, should Lieutenant Flinn get an honorable discharge?
LOTT: I have not gotten into the details of what is involved here. I’m not a member of the Armed Services committee. But I am very concerned about what I have seen with Lieutenant Flinn. I think it’s unfair. I don’t understand why she’s being singled out and punished the way she is.
I think at a minimum she ought to get an honorable discharge. And I’ve got a lot of other questions about why the Air Force hasn’t stepped up this issue and dealt with it better.
I tell you the Pentagon is not in touch with reality on this so-called question of fraternization.
I mean, get real. You’re still dealing with human beings. And the way she had been treated really disturbs me greatly. I just — I haven’t taken it up directly with Secretary of Defense Cohen yet. But if this is not worked out better than it looks like it’s going to be worked out, I am going to take it up with him, because I think she is being badly abused.
QUESTION: Does Congress have a role in guiding the military about?
LOTT: Well, yes. Yes, I think we do. And I think we’re going to have to, you know, get involved in giving some more thought to how these issues like this are going to be handled. My wife has a good question. Where’s the guy that was involved in this deal? I don’t understand all this. And I think it’s very unfair.
By William Kristol; William Kristol is editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD
