For 16 months, Democrats have complained that Republicans have put their political party over the best interests of the country by rationalizing and normalizing the unbecoming behavior of Donald Trump. We’ve often agreed with those assessments. Republicans, sadly, have made a habit of putting partisan politics over the national interest in their fealty to Trump.
Developments surrounding the nomination of Mike Pompeo to be secretary of state, however, reveal Democrats’ high-minded complaints to be little more than posturing. Senate Democrats are playing political games with a highly qualified nominee. That alone is irresponsible. That they are doing so after complaining for a year about State Department vacancies and the resultant crippling of U.S. diplomacy reveals a deeply cynical mendacity. That they’re doing so while the Trump administration faces an array of high-stakes challenges—Russian aggression, Iranian nukes, Syrian slaughter, North Korean threats, Chinese expansionism—is disgraceful.
There is no question Pompeo is qualified. He graduated from West Point at the top of his class. He served as a tank officer in the U.S. Army and patrolled the Berlin Wall before its fall. He went to Harvard Law School and was an editor of its famous law review. He built a successful business and, after his election to the House of Representatives from Kansas’s Fourth District, established himself as a leader on foreign policy and national security issues. He served three terms in Congress, and then Trump picked him to run the Central Intelligence Agency.
Pompeo arrived at Langley with three strikes against him: He was an elected official, he was a Republican, and he came serving a president who had been in an open rhetorical war with the American intelligence community. But he made himself available to intel officers of all stripes, exemplifying a favorite lesson he learned in the Army: “Shut up and listen.” He made clear that, unlike his predecessor, he would not use the CIA for politics and that he wouldn’t leave its officers to fend for themselves when subject to attacks from elected officials. Pompeo quickly won over a skeptical bureaucracy at Langley.
His tenure at the CIA was brief, but it was clearly a success. Yet Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo as CIA director are balking about supporting him now. Their objections are flimsy—often embarrassingly so. As Jenna Lifhits notes in her nearby report on the nomination fight, California senator Dianne Feinstein has said she will not vote for Pompeo. Her rationale: “The secretary of state is a very different role than CIA director, and it’s not the kind of position you learn on the job. I sense a certain disdain for diplomacy in Mike Pompeo that I believe disqualifies him from being our next senior diplomat.”
What’s changed? When Feinstein voted for Pompeo in 2017, she was a long way out from reelection and reportedly considering retirement. Having announced that she’s seeking another term, she now needs to fight off a progressive challenger in a very blue state. Politics over country.
Feinstein was one of 15 Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo in 2017. He’ll only get a few of those votes this time. In 2009, Hillary Clinton was confirmed 94-2, a victory margin that included 39 Republicans even after a serious and prescient debate about potential conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation. In 2013, John Kerry was confirmed 94-3, with 42 Republicans supporting him, despite his long history of partisanship and his false claim that he’d “opposed [George W. Bush’s] decision to go into Iraq.”
Senator Bob Menendez, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that he’s opposing Pompeo. He complained that Pompeo’s nomination-hearing testimony was too vague, offering “a series of goals but no strategy.” This is nonsense—a made-up excuse meant to hide petty partisanship behind a meaningful-sounding objection. Pompeo’s testimony was sharp. He demonstrated a deep understanding of the wide range of challenges he’s likely to face if confirmed. But Pompeo was never going to be specific enough to satisfy Menendez. The New Jersey senator submitted 698 questions for Pompeo to answer in writing—an obnoxious total meant not to elicit real responses but to grind the process to a halt. Combined, the rest of the committee submitted 318.
Menendez is supposed to be a leader of his party on foreign policy. The fact that Mike Pompeo will likely receive a vote of the full Senate without a positive recommendation from the Foreign Relations Committee says far more about the mulish partisanship of Democrats than it does his ability to successfully do the job.
The good news is that at press time Pompeo looks likely to have the support of at least two Democrats (Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota has said she will support him and Joe Manchin of West Virginia is leaning toward the same decision). This is enough to make him the next secretary of state. But the vote isn’t for several days and surprises are not terribly surprising in Trump’s Washington. The question for Democrats: What if you block him?
Pompeo is a smart, thoughtful leader who has the trust and the ear of the country’s president. He’s used his influence to shape Trump’s thinking on such difficult issues as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea. If Pompeo doesn’t get the job, who does? Someone like Rex Tillerson, skeptical of diplomacy and disliked by the president? Someone Trumpier? How does Secretary of State Dana Rohrabacher sound? And what about no one at all—a void at the heart of U.S. diplomacy leaving President Trump out there on his own? This is a man who reportedly said of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un: “Just get me in the room with the guy and I’ll figure it out.” Is party over country worth that?
