When Senator Lindsay Graham, a critic of Tulsi Gabbard, who is tied with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the most endangered nominee, learned that former North Carolina Senator Richard Burr would be shepherding the Director of National Intelligence nominee’s Senate confirmation, it changed everything. “If Burr has confidence in her, that goes a long way with me,” said the South Carolina Republican.
That confidence has a big hole to backfill. The U.S. cut diplomatic ties with Syria in 2011, but Gabbard went there on a visit she kept secret from her staff in 2017 and met with President Bashar al-Assad. She much prefers Vladimir Putin to that “crook” Volodomyr Zelenskyy and sides with Edward Snowden. Burr, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in a bipartisan way, gives her cred.
Whether the nominee is a blank slate or a well-known weirdo like Gabbard or Kennedy Jr, there’s always some hard lifting involved in getting a new class of nominees across the finish line. That’s where Burr and others known as sherpas—not Himalayan porters, but a former White House bigwig or senator, current or former, with student body president likeability that stops short of Eddie Haskell sycophancy, come in.
The sherpa job is vast, whether lending an unknown the credibility of a veteran who knows his way around a spittoon or rehabilitating a known quantity who’s got some ‘splaining to do. Duties include learning the soft spots of a hundred senators and visiting as many of them as possible, organizing press avails with friendly reporters, scripting talking points, and giving fashion advice—enough with the red ties already. It takes stamina and making what you’re saying for the umpteenth seem like the first. Former Senator. Kelly Ayotte, who was just elected Governor of New Hampshire in November, squeezed 80 meetings into a few days for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and it wasn’t even a contentious nomination by today’s standards.
With cases like Gabbard’s, the sherpas have never had it so heavy. Tom Korologos, who passed away last year, was the dean of the species, the White House veteran, holding the indoor record for shepherding 300 plus nominees through their paces, among them Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and William Rehnquist and cabinet secretaries Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and Donald Rumsfeld. He learned his craft as a special assistant to Presidents Nixon and Ford in the 70s, went into private practice after, and had an unblemished record until he took on Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Famous as the Solicitor General who fired special prosecutor Archibold Cox when other Republicans refused to, he was an originalist who found nothing in the constitution creating a right to abortion. Against well-organized Democrats, Korologos suffered his first big loss and afterward pledged to ask the “rottenest, most insulting questions” at his charges to prepare them for the new world. He wasn’t Borked again.
The more controversial the nominee, the more critical the sherpa, naturally. The goal is to share enough stories about family, friends, alma maters, and sports–merch with a senators’ home team logo is always a good ice breaker–to form a bond over coffee and cookies. It needs to be tight enough that a senator would feel churlish bringing up delicate personal matters at a confirmation hearing, like an affair, day drinking, or a flight on a private jet to an undisclosed but sunny location.
One problem Gabbard has is that the confidence Burr has in her doesn’t carry as much weight with other members as it does with Senator Graham, who announced over the weekend that he’s backing her.
Like Gabbard, Kristi Noem, the former South Dakota governor confirmed last month as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, landed an excellent field guide for what could have been a rocky journey. North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer is as preternaturally calm as she is excitable. He walked the marble halls of the Dirksen, Hart, and Russell Senate Office Buildings with the Mount Rushmore Snow Queen. When she addressed employees at DHS for the first time, she walked to the microphone to the tune of Hot Mama by Trace Adkins.
Last year, Noem’s self-induced gaffes knocked her off the short vice presidential list. Her late puppy Cricket remained at peace in puppy heaven next to Ron DeSantis’ selfies cuddling his pooch, which were way too obvious. What would you have done at the rally where Trump silently swayed to music for 40 minutes–play along or stomp off? Questions at her hearing were softballs with cotton ball answers: Mass deportations would sweep up criminals, not agricultural workers. She also assured members that no more NFL games would be halted for an errant drone on her watch. She was approved 59 to 34.
After Matt Gaetz’s aborted nomination, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seemed the most likely to fail. To keep that from happening, the host of Fox & Friends Weekend was put under the wing of former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who is liked by Democrats, including fellow Senator Amy Klobuchar, with whom he worked closely to get a bridge that collapsed during rush hour rebuilt in a year. Coleman, coping with stage four lung cancer, offset Hegseth’s carbon footprint from his drinking, womanizing, and embezzling in half just by standing next to him. It took J.D. Vance to break a tie since no Democrats, including Klobuchar, backed Hegseth, but a razor-thin win is still a cigar. Hegseth was at the Pentagon Monday morning, a building he’d never been in before, to rid the department of its DEI programs and issue orders re: troop deployments in Gaza, in that order.
For a sherpa to reach the summit, a nominee must want one, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listens to his own drummer. You have to be smart to change positions on tender subjects like abortion and vaccines, and Kennedy just doesn’t have what it takes; plus, he’s too stubborn. Many confuse Medicare and Medicaid but are not asking to run two of the most extensive government programs. Show me the evidence,” he demands of the Senators who understand that vaccines are safe, and if he’s wrong and they’re right, he’ll apologize. He never does. He brings up the same rogue study showing they aren’t safe again and thinks he’s won the argument. Committee Chair, Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D., told Kennedy how hard it would be to vote for him, yet Kennedy just kept being Kennedy.
He arrived at his hearing Wednesday with a fresh wound from the friendly fire of Caroline Kennedy, who sent a letter and video to the committee describing someone dangerous. Her younger cousin had lied and cheated his way through life, introduced his siblings to drugs (his brother David died of an overdose), and is a “predator” who enjoys pureeing baby chicks and mice in a blender to feed his hawk. He expurgated his father’s life, and then hers, to advance his presidential campaign only to fail and then grovel before Trump for a job.
At this point, the only part of Kennedy’s agenda he might carry off, if confirmed, is reducing additives in Cocoa Puffs.
By the end of his testimony Friday, you had to wonder, like Stephen Colbert, if Kennedy was qualified to hold a job at Jamba Juice. You might also ask if the Assad-and-Putin apologizing Tulsi Gabbard is competent enough to handle herself at Smoothie King. No to both. Yet Trump is trying to put each of these candidates, who couldn’t make it past H.R. at a mall joint, in a position to make life-and-death decisions over the country.
The contract between the sherpa and climber is one of adhesion. If the nominee gets through, she gets an office with a view, a car purring at the curb, a plane on request, a large staff who distills thousand-page documents down to a handful of three-by-five cards, and to do a lot of good, or not, if that’s what the new secretary is up for.
The sherpa, meantime, gets nothing for agreeing to work long hours for no pay in a forced marriage with a stranger who wants to believe he did it all on his own.
The post In Trump’s Washington, the Nomination “Sherpas” Do the Heavy Lifting. Just ask Kennedy, Gabbard, and Hegseth appeared first on Washington Monthly.
Continue reading...