The estimable radio host and columnist Hugh Hewitt is, alas, dead wrong to suggest that military construction should be used as a targeted tool to help a president’s reelection campaign.
The suggestion in Hewitt’s Aug. 17 Washington Post column amounts to political cynicism writ very large. Yes, lawmakers and the Pentagon should provide the armed services with the military hardware necessary for their missions, to the greatest extent humanly affordable. But the missions, not presidential politics, should drive the decisions.
Hewitt noted that the “Pentagon leadership” has failed to follow through on President Trump’s promise to increase the Navy’s fleet from 290 ships to 355. The Navy certainly does need more ships, considering the challenges from China and from Russia and Iran, among others. Indeed, former president Ronald Reagan tried to build a 600-ship Navy, coming close with 594 in 1987, and some of us think we never should have dipped below 500, or at least not below 450.
Those needs, though, can and should be considered on their own merits, not on politics. Hewitt’s column, however, makes no argument on the merits. Instead, it focuses exclusively on why building more ships should be used as a way to provide more business and jobs for the three states he believes again will hold the balance of power in the 2020 presidential race.
Building more vessels, Hewitt says, will be particularly beneficial to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Not only that, but he suggests that Trump should direct the Pentagon to reverse its merit-based decision to build the F-35A fighter aircraft in Madison, Wisconsin and in Montgomery, Ala., and instead build it at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. Apparently Hewitt thinks the decision on where to build should be made based not on cost, efficiency, or quality, but electoral votes.
Hewitt also suggests that Trump pressure Saudi Arabia and Israel to purchase more Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships — not for any stated reason of our own national security interests, but because the ships are made in swing-state Wisconsin.
As it is, military-construction battles are already too heavily politicized in Congress. The president, who serves the whole country, should provide a fail-safe against over-politicization, rather than joining the scrum. The president’s job is to find the best way to protect the United States and its just common interests, period. To suggest otherwise is to suggest a mutiny against that solemn obligation.
