American society expects the president of the United States to be all things to all people. Some roles are related to constitutional or political duty: the country’s chief diplomat, its civilian head of the military, and its primary influence on domestic policy. Others flow from the nation’s founding, a bygone time of eloquence, and the evolution of media: Our orator in chief, conscience, national healer, and—why not—brand ambassador. No individual is more a spokesman for the United States than the president, for better or worse.
All of which makes “Resisting Trump” an abstract idea. What is it to be a Never Trumper: someone who leans on the White House to restrain the man’s impulsiveness, or who blocks his preferred tax- and health-reform proposals, or who calls out his disregard of facts and historical record, or who criticizes his imprudent temperament or lack of empathy in trying moments? How many of these criteria must be met?
These are the questions that are never considered when partisan Democrats knock certain conservatives for opposing the president only partway, or when Always Trumpers bash the same set for behaving like lapsed Republicans. Because the questions aren’t asked, we have no clear answer for how to define the likes of Jeff Flake and John McCain.
Instead, we have on one end Laura Ingraham, new Fox News host and Trump sympathizer, who said Monday night: “Congressional Never Trumpers, and you know who they are—Jeff Flake, John McCain—they are resisting the Trump agenda, a lot of it at least.”
And on the other end we have Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, who said after the publication of Flake’s Conscience of a Conservative, which criticized Trump: “Jeff Flake sounds like a decent enough guy but I’m waiting to see when he’ll have the courage of his convictions.”
That these dueling perspectives are both rampant is enough to understand why Flake has virtually no constituency: Trump partisans despise him, and there’s little he could do short of switching party affiliation to please the left. But how can these views coexist so prevalently? Are Flake and those like him so enigmatic that they defy political definition? Or has our culture of tribalism critically endangered objectivity?
To counter Ingraham’s point: Flake, according to FiveThirtyEight, has voted in accordance with Trump’s preferences 90 percent of the time this session of Congress. He took ostensibly conservative positions in casting nays against a stopgap funding bill in May and another in September—one of which the president negotiated with Democratic leaders, and both of which he backed. There is little evidence to indicate that Flake is “resisting the Trump agenda.”
There is plenty to indicate that Flake thinks Trump is a boor and a charlatan sullying the office of president. As Flake said in announcing his retirement last week: “We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country: the personal attacks; the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency; the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”
To take Bouie’s point: These are Flake’s convictions. What, then, is the senator’s recourse? Is it to vote against his own party out of protest? No. Because his concerns are not a legislative matter—not unless he supports impeachment (which he doesn’t) or a series of non-binding resolutions, which lack the force of law, expressing his disgust with the White House. Such measures and his speech are both matters of the official Senate record. He already said his piece.
Right-to-left is no longer the dominant dimension of American politics. It is disparage-or-be disparaged, which leaves many people salivating rabidly with contempt for those in the other tribe. Thus why Flake opposes Trump not as an ideological force, but as a hazard to American politics and the institutions of government.
