One of the saddest and most disappointing things about the Trump administration is how it has tainted some Republican officeholders who, by all accounts, should be the party’s rising stars and perhaps even its future presidents and vice presidents.
Case in point: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The former congressman from Kansas’s 4th Congressional District served three terms in the House of Representatives before Trump picked him to serve as his CIA Director and, subsequently, Secretary of State.
Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point, served in West Germany as an armor officer with the 4th Infantry Division, and then graduated from Harvard Law School. Together with two West Point friends, he founded a successful aerospace manufacturing company before serving as president of Sentry International, an oil drilling manufacturing firm.
In Congress, Pompeo was a widely respected conservative legislator admired for his brains and insight on defense and foreign policy matters. But as Secretary of State, Pompeo has felt a palpable need to Trumpify himself, so to speak, by being angry and nasty toward journalists who ask him tough but fair questions.
Of course, as a congressman, Pompeo never seemed to vilify the media; but in Trump’s Washington, being a non-belligerent in the culture war against an independent and sometimes adversarial press is not an option.
Pompeo knows that one of the best ways to connect with his boss is to demonize the fourth estate and rail against so-called fake news. Thus he does so and in Trumpian fashion.
Pompeo also explains and defends Trump administration foreign policy by incessantly and gratuitously taking swipes at the Obama administration.
This is unseemly and unbecoming, and it has become tiresome; but Pompeo knows that the best and perhaps only way to persuade Trump to do anything is to convince him that Obama did the opposite. Hence the constant disparagement of all things Obama.
Still, despite his manifest efforts to ingratiate himself with his boss, Pompeo has been relatively constrained and contained. Until now that is, when he seems to have blown a gasket, so to speak.
Indeed, Pompeo quite literally blew up at National Public Radio (NPR) reporter Mary Louise Kelly after she had the effrontery to ask him a timely and topical question about Ukraine during an exclusive, one-on-one interview.
Specifically, Kelly asked Pompeo whether he owed former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, an apology for failing to defend Yovanovitch against attacks by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others. It was a completely fair and legitimate question that Pompeo should have anticipated, since his failure to defend Yovanovitch and other State Department officials caught up in the Trump impeachment has been in the news for months now.
But Pompeo clearly resented the question, refused to answer it, and cut the interview short. He then became angry and belligerent, while giving voice to his inner Trump. Kelly told Ari Shapiro, the host of NPR’s All Things Considered, what happened after the interview ended. MSNBC correspondent David Gura summarized Kelly’s exchange with Shapiro in a tweet:
Pompeo’s little tirade will no doubt earn him plaudits in the Oval Office; however, it reflects very poorly upon him and on President Trump. We expect, or at least should expect, a certain professional etiquette and decorum in our elected leaders. Indeed, as the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, well put it:
“I thought it was the responsibility of the Secretary of State to explain to Americans why they should care about Ukraine, not to berate a journalist asking legitimate questions about his lack of support for foreign service officers acting professionally.”
The Trump era, moreover, will soon end; and, when it does, voters will be looking for political leaders prepared to break from the buffoonery and incompetence of the present occupant of the Oval Office. By debasing himself in order to remain in Trump’s good graces, Pompeo is disqualifying himself in the eyes of many voters.
To paraphrase Barry Goldwater in a different context: Independent-mindedness in defense of decency is no vice, and servility in the pursuit of vulgarity is no virtue. That’s something our Secretary of State might wish to consider as he contemplates his own political future.
Feature photo/illustration credit: Paul Rogers/The New Yorker.