Congress doesn’t seem quite sure what its job is these days. As impeachment inches forward in the House, the policy priorities that both Democrats and Republicans made central to their campaigns have succumbed to gridlock.
For Daniel Gade, that ineffective governance was the catalyst to jump into the Republican primary for the 2020 Virginia Senate race. After 25 years in the military and a career since then as an advocate, a stint in the George W. Bush White House, and, most recently, a professor at American University, Gade thinks it’s time to take his experience to Capitol Hill. As he explained over coffee in September, running for Senate is “a continuation of my decades of public service.”
After graduating from West Point, Gade served in U.S. Army and retired as a lieutenant colonel. While deployed in Iraq, he was twice wounded in combat with his second injury resulting in the amputation of his right leg. Drawing on his own experience, Gade founded the Independence Project, a non-profit group which helps disabled veterans transition back to the workforce and, more controversially, emphasizes the importance of veterans working for a paycheck rather than receiving disability checks.
That willingness to look past “politics as usual” and instead focus on what works emerged as a central theme of his campaign throughout our conversation.
As he explained, “my whole approach to this campaign and this role is that there are times when a Senator is going to have to make decisions that are not necessarily ideologically pure. If you’re making everybody 100% happy, if you’re trying to make everybody 100% happy, you’re not getting anything done.”
When asked about immigration, for example, Gade laid the blame squarely on lawmakers’ shoulders: “There is a problem with Congress that is so gridlocked that it’s afraid to solve problems that we know we have.”
He added that issues like immigration and border security must be solved in “a long-term, bipartisan way that, truthfully, might not make either party completely happy. But nevertheless, is the right thing to do.”
That’s a nice way of saying that lawmakers, in their scrabble to stick to party lines, haven’t done their jobs.
An assertive Congress and a bipartisan immigration bill, however, are likely to upset President Trump, which is something that GOP lawmakers have been wary of doing. Gade has thought about that too and, for him, it comes down to constitutional responsibility: “The legislative branch is an equal branch to the executive branch. The legislative branch has its own authority under the Constitution and should have no qualms about exercising that authority.”
As a veteran, Gade is even more adamant that Congress takes seriously its responsibilities when it comes to waging war. As he put it, “the Constitution says that the power to declare war is a congressional power. Outside of an emergency situation, Congress should be the one that is — for specific purposes, for specific lengths of time — delegating power to the executive branch to pursue a war.”
But that goes beyond the constitutional mandate. As a veteran, Gade knows the consequences of combat and sees the necessity of public support for America’s wars:
As for standing up to Trump, necessary for Congress to live up to its constitutional mandates, Gade pointed to his previous experience in combat: “My history of military service, my being decorated for valor in combat, would indicate to anybody that I don’t have a cowardice problem. If I need to do things that are in opposition to the president — whether this party this president, the other party a different president, or a far future president of either party — I have no problem opposing a president.”
That’s certainly an admirable stance at a time when GOP lawmakers, even those who ran on a platform championing rule of law and taking on Trump’s grip on the party, have backed down.
Even Gade, however, was sure to note that, “the thing that bothers me is when the legislative branch is wasting its time trying to embarrass the president. That’s not a helpful use of their time. That’s not what they should be doing.” Politics, after all, is still partisan and Trump is still the Republican’s man in the White House.
These contradictions between stated beliefs and standing up to Trump were even clearer when I pressed Gade for comment on Trump’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That conversation, a summary of which was released by the White House, includes an exchange where Trump pressures Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son in exchange for supporting Ukraine’s defenses against armed Russian aggression. A whistleblower complaint, filed by a CIA officer, raised concerns about the call and indicated that the White House had tried to hide Trump’s remarks.
Gade dismissed lawmakers’ concerns over the president asking a foreign government to investigate his political rival. He told me the impeachment inquiry is “just more evidence of the Democrats trying to destroy the duly elected president for their own crass political ends.”
In 2020, voters in Virginia will have to decide if that response counts as Congress doing its job and lives up to lawmakers’ responsibilities as outlined in the Constitution.
That’s a question that voters who have looked to Republicans as champions of restraint, limited government, and individual liberty will have to consider around the country. For now, it seems those conservative ideas are a distant second to supporting Trump.
Erin Dunne (@erinelsadunne) is a writer based in Washington, D.C., and a former commentary fellow with the Washington Examiner. She is a graduate of the Yenching Academy at Peking University. Her writing has appeared in the Morocco World News, Real Clear Defense, The Diplomat, and other publications.
