The Situation: Gaetz Goes Down
Taking wins where I can find them.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
The Situation yesterday asked whether flooding the zone with shit was a viable path to securing the confirmation of a cabinet.
Today we say goodbye to Matt Gaetz.
Whether Gaetz’s withdrawal from the Senate’s consideration for attorney general proves to be a big win or a small one remains to be seen. It depends on whom the president-elect chooses to replace him. It depends on how readily the Senate confirms that person—who may present issues of his or her own—having been relieved of the burden of voting on Gaetz. And it depends on whether in its relief, the Senate now considers itself done with this withholding consent business and moves hastily to put a vaccine denier in charge of public health, a person who parrots Russian propaganda in charge of the intelligence community, and a wildly underqualified television personality in charge of the most powerful military bureaucracy in the world.
But without assuming facts not yet in evidence, I am comfortable saying that Gaetz’s withdrawal is a win of some size.
It’s a win, first of all, for the Justice Department, which will not be led by Matt Gaetz. True, it is possible that President-elect Trump will nominate someone just as bad as Gaetz—or almost as bad. But Gaetz’s withdrawal at least opens the possibility of a nominee who would do less institutional damage to the department than he would. Even a nominee who has not pre-committed himself to bringing the department “to heel” on Trump’s behalf and who doesn’t trade in conspiracy theories about federal law enforcement would be a significant improvement. Recall that Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, both terrible attorneys general, nonetheless had limits they would not cross. Having a nominee who may have some limits would be a dramatic improvement over Gaetz, who showed no sign of having any.
It’s a win for the Senate’s advice and consent process—and an encouraging sign about at least some Senate Republicans in the context of that process. Gaetz, in a statement on social media, made clear that his decision followed “excellent meetings with Senators yesterday,” in which it became “clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition” and would produce a “needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”
The New York Times translated this verbiage into plain English—and math:
Matt Gaetz told people close to him that he concluded after conversations with senators and their staffs that there were at least four Republican senators who were implacably opposed to his nomination: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and John Curtis of Utah.
It is way too soon to pronounce that some coalition of the vertebrates has emerged. Let’s see first how the Implacable Four respond to the three other monumentally unacceptable nominees: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Pete Hegseth.
It is not too soon, however, to declare that establishing early that the Senate has some limit is valuable.
It’s also a win for the notion that sexual misconduct still matters—at least sometimes and at some degree of extremity. Again, how much it matters very much remains to be seen. Is Gaetz unacceptable because he allegedly paid for sex? Because that sex was with a minor? Or both—with drugs involved? And is Hegseth, whom police merely investigated for possibly raping an adult woman, thus in the clear from the point of view of the Implacable Four? Or is he now in trouble too? And of course, as long as Trump remains atop the administration, it will always have more than its share of sexual assault allegations. Still, a week ago I had to wonder whether being investigated by the Department of Justice for sex trafficking a minor disqualified a man from running the department. Now I don’t. And that’s good.
And finally, Gaetz’s withdrawal is a win for the proposition, which is also important to establish early, that President-elect Trump—for all of his own rhetoric and that of the resistance to him—does not, in fact, wield dictatorial powers and is subject to constitutional constraints.
Do not believe for a minute that the Gaetz nomination was a kind of feint, an effort to distract the public so that some other person will glide into the office. Trump wanted Gaetz to be his attorney general. And he didn’t get him. And he didn’t get him because at least four Republicans said no. It’s not much, but it’s a start. And right now, I should take wins where I can.
