This past week, Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s strange misconduct did nothing to advance the idea that Senate Republicans were taking President Trump’s impeachment trial with any semblance of sobriety, solemnity, or seriousness.
During the course of the week’s impeachment proceedings, Blackburn’s behavior became progressively more unserious and embarrassing. On Tuesday night, she skipped a portion of the trial to do an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. Normally doing a television interview would be normal and fine for a senator, but skipping the trial to do so was a clear violation of the Senate rules governing the impeachment proceedings.
Even when Blackburn decided to attend the trial, she didn’t bother to pay attention. After journalists noticed Blackburn reading a book during the proceedings, the senator doubled down and bragged that Kimberley Strassel’s new book, Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America, somehow was giving her some deep insight into the real truth behind the impeachment hearings.
I’m sure I argued the same thing when I was caught reading fantasy football guides during high school Spanish class. But it wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.
Later that night, Blackburn took to Twitter to attack Purple Heart recipient Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and question his patriotism.
Adam Schiff is hailing Alexander Vindman as an American patriot.
How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 23, 2020
Of course, Blackburn isn’t alone in her public stands against the entire impeachment process. Sens. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and others have spent the past weeks on television decrying the impeachment of Trump as a partisan witch hunt. And, of course, it wasn’t just Republicans who grew restless or failed to pay attention during some of the proceedings. The impeachment managers’ 24-hour opening arguments wore on the entire chamber, where the average age is 62.
But Blackburn’s erratic behavior is particularly disturbing because it flies in the face of Tennessee’s rich political pedigree.
I’m happy to admit that I am a partisan Democrat, but I must concede that my home state has produced impressive, thoughtful, and effective Republican politicians over the years. Our state has produced Republican leaders such as Howard Baker, Bob Corker, Bill Frist, Bill Haslam, and Blackburn’s current Senate colleague, Lamar Alexander. This makes Blackburn’s particular inability to practice baseline decorum and treat people decently an embarrassment to Tennessee.
In the past three years, Blackburn has gone on Fox News too many times to count but has had few, if any, town halls in person with the people of Tennessee.
Worse, Blackburn is becoming a true creature of Washington, to boot. On Jan. 3, 2019, she put her left hand on the Bible and her right hand in the air and swore to God, state, and nation that she would “support and defend the Constitution.” Less than an hour after her swearing-in, Blackburn was on Fox News giving her television fans a daily dosage of swamp-style politics.
Blackburn stands in stark contrast to Tennessee’s other senator, the retiring Lamar Alexander, who is widely considered to be a decisive vote on whether the Senate will call witnesses in the final days of the trial. Recent headlines have hailed Alexander as “intelligent, hard-working, and trustworthy,” a “bridge-builder,” and an “institutionalist.”
At this point in her career, Marsha Blackburn is clearly no Lamar Alexander, and with his retirement set to take place a year from now, there’s no evidence that she has any intention of taking his place by modeling his conduct. As far as Tennessee Republican politics go, the gulf in class between Lamar Alexander and Marsha Blackburn so far seems enormous.
Christopher Hale (@chrisjollyhale) is a Democratic politician from Tennessee. He is an alumnus of President Barack Obama’s White House and reelection campaign, where he helped lead national faith outreach.
