Opinion | Liz Cheney Shows What Leadership Looks Like
Provided by John Milgram
Opinion | Liz Cheney Shows What Leadership Looks Like
Peggy Noonan Jan. 14, 2021 6:23 pm ET
8-10 minutes
Liz Cheney’s was a moment of real stature. Addressing the issue of impeachment, the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership said, of the events of Jan. 6: “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
And so she would vote to impeach. Her remarks implicitly urged others in her party to do so, and the bluntness and power of what she said offered them cover: They could be tough too. But most couldn’t. They were stupid and cowardly.
They claimed high-minded concern for the nation’s well-being, but they didn’t seem to believe their own arguments; some rushed through their statements, some gestured wildly as if hoping their arms could convince their brains they were sincere. Impeachment is needlessly divisive. They weren’t concerned about division when they refused to accept the Electoral College result. You’re rushing it. The president’s term is expiring; those who need more time to understand what happened on 1/6 don’t want to understand it. It’s revenge. Revenge has no high purpose and is base. The impeachment consisted of a branch of the American government asserting the country’s standards and the rule of law; an attempt to act decisively against a historic transgression in a way that says, “No more”; an attempt to draw clear and vivid lines for future leaders. To do nothing is to guarantee that it will happen again, that “storming of the Capitol” will become a picture in the minds of the ignorant and unstable as a thing that is possible for them, an option.
Ms. Cheney’s stand seemed brought by conviction, and given that she is the only woman in the House Republican leadership, took some guts: She operates within an environment that is dumb, male and clubby. She courted danger by giving them more reason to want to suppress her down the road.
They didn’t wait for down the road. Rep. Jim Jordan quickly announced she should be stripped of her leadership position. Others showed up on Hannity to drum up momentum. Having a GOP House leader vote for impeachment is “untenable,” Rep. Matt Gaetz said, showing he knows the word untenable.
The distinguishing characteristic of the House Republican Caucus right now is that whenever you say, “Could they be that stupid?” the answer—always—is, “Oh yes!”
That is how to kill the party in American national life—the men make it clear that the woman can’t be brave, that they rough her up because she stood on principle. This week, before the vote, Mr. Jordan was awarded the Medal of Freedom. I am not sure that great honor will ever recover. No press were allowed, but I’m sure the ceremony was elevated, like P.T. Barnum knighting Tom Thumb with a wooden sword in the center ring of the circus.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ms. Cheney told reporters Wednesday, and good for her. As this was written, there was a rumor it had dawned on her antagonists that there might be a backlash if the only woman in leadership was ejected. So they thought they might replace her with—a woman! They could be this crude, but I can’t believe it. I can’t imagine any woman would be so classless, so happy to be used, so craven that she’d be switched in for a woman who took a brave stand based on conscience. There’d be a pall over that woman for years.
For the senators who will try the impeachment, a thought: It’s time to demystify Donald Trump. He leaves the presidency disgraced. He is a diminishing asset: postpresidential power always wanes, and will especially in this case. He can’t tweet his insta-attacks. Not all of his supporters are rocked and disheartened, but some are: What happened on 1/6 was wrong, has been seen by the country as wrong, and people are going to go to jail for it. Thousands turned up that day, but only thousands, in a nation of 330 million. The more time passes, the more we will learn how sinister it was. Evangelicals are having true and meaningful arguments about the meaning of the past five years. So much of Trump’s mystique rests on his wealth and worldly success, but they too are diminishing. Other, newer, younger candidates will draw attention. Just as establishment Republicans have known they cannot win without the Trump base, the Trump base is about to learn they cannot win without non-Trump Republicans. To come together eventually, in coming years, the Normals will have to agree to a party with more-populist inflections. The populists will have to cede something too. Quietly, over time, that will be Mr. Trump himself.
In running in fear from him you are running from a corpse. And you’ll never be safe anyway. Something wild has been let loose. So be brave. The Democrats want you tied to Mr. Trump forever. Stop, now.
I end with—well, my imagination. But I’ve got a hunch. We’ve got the simmering, resentful, enraged man in the White House, a man who due to his position is dangerous. You never know what he’s going to do. That’s why no one in America has had a normal sleep pattern since Jan. 5.
And yet—systems are maintaining. It’s as if sane, good people have set themselves to making sure everything is smooth, not endangered by a mad person. Perhaps this has to do with some of those who have been endlessly put down the past five years—governmental servants. The sober, boring people who don’t say they’re patriots but are patriots. I have a feeling we will look back—in time, after journalists and historians do their work—and find that some very specific people were deeply protective of their country. And maybe the 25th Amendment figuratively kicked in, informally, almost spontaneously, quietly. I am guessing a network of souls are quietly doing their jobs, establishing protocols of safety, wordlessly nodding as they keep their hand on the tiller. They’ve taken the keys from the drunk, so quietly he doesn’t even know. I’m imagining a mix of people—deputy secretaries and assistants to assistants and generals and some elected officials. Nancy Pelosi nattered on about how she’s on the horn with the Joint Chiefs, but beyond that no mistakes seem to have been made, and at least she stopped.
I just have a feeling our much-maligned establishments are saving the day. A former cabinet official said to me this week, “Trump never understood our institutions.” He never understood how strong and deeply layered they are. The agencies held, the military, the courts. Because Mr. Trump is purely transactional, he thought if he appointed Neil, Brett and Amy, they’d naturally do his bidding because that’s how the world works. But it’s not always how the world works. This week the Supreme Court blandly refused to fast-track his latest election appeal. They did it quietly, without comment.
I have a feeling there was a lot of quiet stature around us all along.
And they were quietly thinking: Don’t mess with my country. But they didn’t say mess.
