Still Winning : Our Last Hope to Be Great Again (9781546085287)

by Hurt, Charles

  Democrats, obviously, were tepidly optimistic at the massive blunder by Bush. Harry Reid said the Court would benefit from a lawyer without judicial experience and more time spent actually practicing law. Senator Chuck Schumer said the pick could have been worse. Senator Dianne Feinstein was also optimistic. As enthusiastic identity-politics Democrats, they were predictably pleased with the fact that Miers was a woman.

  Conservatives were rightly horrified. “Souter in a skirt!” they declared about the entirely untested Harriet Miers.

  Here was a simple opportunity after decades of frustration and defeat at the Supreme Court to install a true constitutionalist to the bench. A Republican was in the White House. Republicans controlled the Senate. It was an easy win. A lay-up. And in his arrogance, Bush picked a buddy from the old establishment network. It proved everything principled conservatives hate about establishment Republicans in Washington.

  The outcry was as vicious as it was predictable. At first, Republican senators went through the motions, agreeing to meet with Miers. But as time went on, with conservatives around the country who care about the integrity of the high court and who have learned the lessons of running with dark horses and blank slates, Republican ranks in the Senate began to break.

  Eventually, the White House realized they had no hope of getting Harriet Miers confirmed. The stakes were too high and Miers was too unknown. At her request, Bush withdrew her nomination and returned to the drawing board in search of a proper, vetted constitutionalist. To President Bush’s credit, he found Judge Samuel Alito, a brilliant strict constitutionalist who would have made Chief Justice Rehnquist proud. Democrats once again did their devil best to smear and destroy Alito, but Republicans held their ground and got him confirmed. On the high court, Alito soon made his mark in alliance with fellow Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as a rock solid constitutionalist.

  LITIGIOUS CONSTITUTIONALIST

  By the time Donald Trump descended his glass escalator into the wasteland that was the American political scene, it is safe to say that I had become a fairly radicalized Supreme Court voter. I had seen up close and firsthand what conservative voters across the country knew instinctively: the battle for the soul of our country was being fought in the federal courts, far from the reaches of electoral politics.

  It was not the battlefield of our choosing. It was the battlefield chosen by Ted Kennedy and his leftist army.

  For conservatives, the idea of a political fight over the courts is the opposite of what the courts are supposed to be about. Judges are supposed to be impartial, fiercely nonpartisan protectors of our individual constitutional liberties. They do not make law. They do not execute laws. They stand as a safeguard to ensure that governments, the legislature, and the executive branch never trample on our freedoms.

  In the months after Trump announced his campaign for presidency, some of my oldest friends in Washington recited the same unfounded refrain over and over again about Trump.

  “Lawless! A tyrant! Trump will shred the Constitution!”

  This always amused me, especially after eight years of Barack Obama, whose tenure was dominated by lawlessness.

  President Obama refused to enforce basic federal laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act. After years of correctly saying he did not have the constitutional authority to protect illegal aliens from prosecution and deportation, he summarily did just that with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans programs. In other cases, such as with Obamacare, President Obama simply used administrative maneuvering to rewrite the law passed by Congress whenever it suited him. And let’s not forget Obama’s top law enforcement officer in the land, Attorney General Eric Holder, became the first cabinet official in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress over his refusal to hand over documents relating to the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” international gun smuggling operation.

  All this hysterical pearl-clutching about Trump’s supposed disdain for the Constitution rang a little hollow to me.

  Anyway, I argued back, have you ever looked at all the people Donald Trump has sued over the decades he worked as a successful real estate mogul, reality star, and celebrity? I mean, the guy sued everyone from Merv Griffin to a Miss America contestant for reasons ranging from casino dealings to Trump branding issues.

  How could a guy who has launched as many lawsuits as Trump has over the course of his career not have at least some regard for the Constitution? If elected, I told these people, Trump would be the most litigiously aggressive president in American history! How could such a guy not want to protect the Constitution? Among the most blindly afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, this argument carried little sway.

  I will admit, it was not an ironclad argument. But then again, nothing is ironclad in politics. Especially when it comes to federal judges.

  Just ask Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Reagan fared better than the others. But the Bushes were the Forrest Gumps of the federal judiciary. For them, judicial nominations were like a box of chocolates. You just never knew what you were gonna get.

  One of my dearest friends who lost her mind over Donald Trump once concluded a heated tirade by saying: “You just watch! It is going to be so funny when this madman becomes president and nominates his sister to the Supreme Court. And it will be all your fault.”

  I would be lying if I said that didn’t send shivers through me.

  While I recognized in Trump a deeply careful listener with unmatched political instincts, what really did I know about his judicial philosophy? Did he know the difference between a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a David Souter, and a William Rehnquist? The things that made him such a smart politician—transactionally principled, pragmatically goal oriented, and ill-tempered when necessary—were not exactly the ingredients of a good judicial philosophy. Still, something deep down gave me faith that while Trump himself would not make a very good Supreme Court justice, he had the wisdom, smarts, and patience to figure out who would.

  Then came February 13, 2016. It was a Saturday and we were at my grandmother’s farm down in Orange County, Virginia, outside the small hamlet of Rapidan. It was a sunny winter day and we had spent the short daylight hours marching through the woods with the children and the dogs, looking for fresh deer antler sheds and taking in the glorious sights of the distant Blue Ridge Mountains.

  The dining room was set for an early dinner and we were about to sit down when I remembered that I had not looked at my phone since the morning. I needed to check in just to make sure Washington had not burned to the ground or Florida had not been invaded by ISIS. The news could not possibly have been a swifter blow to the gut.

  Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was dead.

  After I had gathered my wits, my family assembled around the table. Like millions of Americans that evening, we said the blessing, making a special point to remember Justice Scalia’s family.

  During dinner, the children were most interested in hearing about Scalia. Who was he? Why was he important? What did he do on the Supreme Court? How did he die? How old was he?

  If you cover politics for a living, yet you believe that politics should make up but a tiny fraction of a family’s life, moments like these can be difficult to strike a balance. You look for that balance between understanding the true and real gravity of a political threat from actors inside the federal government and confidence that this extraordinary system of checks and balances the Founders devised for us can withstand any such bad actors.

  In seeking that balance, this was one of those cases where I failed miserably.

  By the time I finished answering all of their questions and describing the monumental importance of Justice Scalia and just how much of a patriot the great man was, I looked up from my meal. The children had all stopped eating. Utensils still on their plates, hands in their laps, they stared at me.

  We were sitting just about twenty miles as the crow flies fro
m James Madison’s Montpelier, where each of the children had spent summers attending “mud camp.” We were at the place where their great-grandmother and great-grandfather had raised a family running a cattle farm. For the children, it was a land where they learned to shoot guns, had Bible study in the yard with their grandmother, and celebrated every fruit of American freedom under the sun.

  I don’t remember what I told them about Justice Scalia and his importance to preserving freedom and a way of life, but it must have been a pretty scalding oration. They sat staring at me with wide eyes, bulging near tears. They wanted to know what would happen next.

  And who would replace Justice Scalia.

  It was one of those singular moments in your life as a parent when you have no answer. You are completely helpless. All you can do is step off a receding ledge of solid hope onto a nearly invisible cloud of faith. And not because you are a particularly faithful person or some kind of wise Christian. But because you have no other choice.

  Looking back on that moment today and remembering the hopelessness I felt over the loss of Justice Antonin Scalia, I marvel at how it all worked out. Truly, it is one of those times where you cannot help but think that the good Lord really does have a special place in His heart for the United States.

  It was sometime later that Donald Trump instructed the respected constitutionalist Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society to help craft a list of carefully vetted federal judges from which he would choose any Supreme Court nominees. It turned out to be a brilliant ploy that calmed the concerns of millions of conservative voters worried about Donald Trump’s own lack of a record when it came to picking federal judges.

  The lion’s share of credit goes to Trump himself, but also important was not only Leonard Leo’s contribution but also Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made the bold gamble shortly after Justice Scalia died that he would keep the vacancy open until a new president was elected to succeed Obama, who was in his final year of office. Of course, most observers figured that would be Hillary Clinton. But to conservative constitutionalist voters around the country, nothing inspires them to the polls more than a chance to inject sanity into the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court. It would prove to be one of the biggest issues that got Trump elected.

  President Trump has remained faithful to his promise to work from the list of carefully vetted federal jurists. Even the most die-hard Never Trumper Republicans cannot help but admit that this has been an unalloyed victory for conservatives. Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch brings to the bench a fidelity to the Constitution that would make Justice Scalia proud. And few constitutionalists have spent more years than Justice Brett Kavanaugh slogging away in the bowels of constitutional arguments in Washington.

  If you have any doubt about how effective Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will be, just look at the toxic, vitriolic smear campaign Democrats waged against Kavanaugh. It was as dishonest as it was unfair and desperate, a perfect reflection of just how much these leftist Democrats see at stake over the Supreme Court.

  At the lowest moment of the Kavanaugh hearings—after the man had been slimed with the most scurrilous and unhinged accusations imaginable—President Trump publicly defended his nominee. He said he would withdraw the nomination if he thought any of the accusations were remotely true. He did not. When all the smoke and cannon fire finally cleared, President Trump was still standing behind his nominee. It was a display of political fortitude never before seen in these judicial wars.

  Finally, Ted Kennedy and his cabal of lawless miscreants had met their match, in President Donald Trump.

  CHAPTER SIX

  President Trump visits graves of U.S. veterans in France (Saul Loeb)

  HILLARY THE WARMONGER

  I consider myself about as worldly and well traveled as the next guy. I have been all over Europe, banged up more than my share of rental cars in countries where they drive on the wrong side of the road.

  I went behind the Iron Curtain and have been to the God-forsaken Middle East more than once. As a kid I spent a summer working in a hospital in the remote jungles of Africa. I survived a pretty nasty strain of malaria.

  I have even been to Canada. Though I have never felt the tug to spend much time in Mexico, I buy all of my fireworks at South of the Border (in South Carolina) and love all those little border towns in Texas and New Mexico and Arizona.

  I draw the line at California.

  But, like the vast majority of Americans, I would not present myself as any particular foreign policy expert. It really is one of the luxuries of having almost an entire continent to ourselves.

  If good fences make good neighbors, vast oceans make the best neighbors. Tall walls also make good neighbors.

  Quick aside: Why is it that when all the rich white celebrities in America threatened to leave the country if Donald Trump won the election, they threatened to move to Canada?

  Why Canada? Why do they want to go to the whitest country in the hemisphere? What is wrong with Honduras or Venezuela? Or even Mexico? It’s right next door, too?

  My second—and far more important question—is why don’t these rich white celebrities ever keep their grand promises? We would all be so much happier and America would be so much better off if they would actually pony up on all their big talk and move to another country. Talk about Making America Great Again!

  All of this is by way of saying that I am not an entirely unworldly person. And, while I have lived much of my adult life in a couple of fairly cosmopolitan cities—Detroit and Washington, D.C.—I do not suffer from any kind of profound anxiety about being an American. In fact, I am incredibly proud of being an American. Always have been. Always will be.

  The vast majority of people I have lived and worked around in the big city—particularly your nation’s capital—are more than just a hint embarrassed about being American. Deep down, they wish to be French or Vietnamese or Italian. At the very least, they would like to possess a sort of international personal stature. Now, these are good people. They love their children and raise them with discipline. They work hard and pursue honesty. But they really do consider themselves citizens of the world, rather than Americans. This is particularly true among reporters—even more particularly so among political reporters in Washington, D.C.

  For these people, there is no greater plum assignment than to be sent to Moscow to report for several years. Or Buenos Aires. They jump at any chance to go abroad, which I certainly understand. I share that sense of adventure. It is why I spent six years in Detroit.

  But these people, they go abroad, they cover stories unique to whatever region of the world they went to, and then they come home and never stop talking about it. It’s as if, somehow, the plummeting exchange rate on the value of Persian rugs between Russia and Iran is vitally important to the average guy walking down the street in some town in America. Now, I like Oriental rugs as much as the next guy, but I can tell you that it is not a pressing matter to your average reader here in America.

  These internationalist Americans come back from their travels thoroughly infected with the idea that they—and therefore all of their fellow Americans—should give a rip about international rug prices in Iran and Russia. When they find out people don’t want to listen to them going on and on about the injustice or this or that in Persia or wherever, they reach the disastrously wrong conclusion that the oblivious Americans are stupid.

  No, actually. They are very smart. They have their priorities straight. Top ten include things like their family, their neighbors, their job, their church, their car, and so on. Along about 10,495th on their list of priorities is—quite wisely—the price of rugs in Iran.

  Most of them—understandably—are far more concerned about the price of gasoline at the nearest service station. Oddly, the most worldly Americans may be farmers who deal with international pricing and world market demands more than most major industries. A farmer, however, doesn’t care about the price of a rug. He is most concerned about what he i
s going to get this year for his crop of soybeans or corn or wheat.

  Let’s take something a little less ridiculous than the price of Persian rugs on the global market. Let’s consider the condition of people living in a hellhole under a vicious dictator in a faraway place like Syria. Or Libya. Places someone less politically attuned might call “sh*tholes.”

  In no way do I mean to belittle the plight of the good men, women, and children who must live in these horrid places. As an American, I believe our right to govern ourselves comes directly from God. No king, government, or dictator has the right to interfere with that blessing from God. But that does not mean that all the problems of the world belong to me. Or my neighbors here in America. Or my children or my cousins. Or my country.

  There are really sad things going on all over this mean, rotten world. But I am not responsible for them. And just because we are the freest, richest, most powerful country on the planet does not in any way mean that we are somehow suddenly responsible for all of the ills of the world.

  If you purchased a book written by me, you probably already understand this. Your list of global priorities are fairly well—and wisely—settled. The incalculable miseries of some forgotten third-world barbaric state are nowhere near as important as your responsibility to make car pool on time for your children and the three other kids you pick up for school three times a week.

  But these internationalist Americans view it differently. Radically differently. The squalid problems of some miserable spit of desert more than six thousand miles away is bizarrely important to an alarming number of people in this country. And, most terrifyingly, an alarming number of those people hold powerful positions here in America, particularly in the professions of the media and politics. And it is not necessarily a partisan thing.