Clintonized Republicans
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
clintonized Republicans By William Kristol In politics, as in life, little things are often the most revealing. Senate majority leader Trent Lott does lots of big things—chemical-weapons treaties,...
...Let's deconstruct Sen...
...He thinks that the way to close it is to show sympathy for Kelly Flinn...
...What Lott's remarks reveal is the ascendancy of Clinton and Clintonism...
...Zigo is conspicuously missing from Lott's remarks...
...Two days later, Bill Clinton's Air Force secretary denied Lieutenant Flinn's request for an honorable discharge...
...At a minimum...
...Indeed, the question to be asked is about Gayla Zigo, the wronged woman...
...Not only did his Defense Department resolve the Flinn case differently than Sen...
...I think it's unfair...
...QUESTION: Does Congress have a role in guiding the military about...
...LOTT: Well, yes...
...I just—I haven't taken it up directly with Secretary of Defense Cohen yet...
...4. Which leads to the issue of respect for institutions, and especially traditional institutions like the military...
...Some observers have wondered whether Bill Clinton's lasting contribution to American politics will be to define the presidency down...
...But the presidency will survive Bill Clinton's tenure...
...More than anything else, Lott wants to let us know he feels Kelly Flinn's pain...
...Secretary Cohen emphasized that he disagreed, and that he expected the military to "uphold the highest standards of conduct in the world...
...Because (and here is his first Clintonian impulse) one doesn't need to know much to be "concerned"—indeed to be "very concerned"—about something...
...Indeed, a senior adviser at the White House, Rahm Emanuel, explained that President Clinton was concerned about how we shape attitudes...
...To be fair to Clinton's administration, though, one ought to note that its actions were more responsible than Lott's recommendation...
...The day after Lott's statement, the president went out of his way to denounce "heroin chic" fashion advertisements...
...But I am very concerned about what I have seen with Lieutenant Flinn...
...No way...
...They spoke in defense of family, the military, and morality...
...Lott wished, but Cohen then took it upon himself to defend the armed services' standards against critics like Lott: "There are some who now suggest that the military is preaching Victorian values in the age of Aquarius, that our standards are unrealistic or even undesirable when contrasted with contemporary mores...
...The voice answering the questions is Trent Lott's, but the sensibility is Bill Clinton's...
...But if this is not worked out better than it looks like it's going to be worked out, I am going to take it up with him, because I think she is being badly abused...
...It is hard to believe that she asked so foolish a question...
...tions, individuals, or the public discourse...
...Get real" means: Give up on traditional moral standards...
...2. Lott asserts that Kelly Flinn's treatment was "unfair...
...7. Finally, taking another play from the original Clinton playbook, Lott invokes his wife...
...Lott has internalized a certain view of the gender gap, in which pioneering American women like Kelly Flinn are singled out for persecution by traditional, male-dominated institutions...
...concurs with their view that the military services "need to review their antiquated adultery rules...
...Senate majority leader Trent Lott does lots of big things—chemical-weapons treaties, budget deals, and the like...
...And the way she has been treated really disturbs me greatly...
...Nothing was more au courant at first than Clinton-ism...
...Does he therefore refrain from commenting...
...The gaysin-the-military initiative was emblematic of the early Clinton administration...
...1. Lott begins by acknowledging that he doesn't really know much about the Kelly Flinn case...
...I don't understand all this...
...I mean, get real...
...But Trent Lott's Republicanism is modeled on Bill Clinton, not on Ronald Reagan...
...But his wife, Gayla Zigo, was and is...
...Call it the Hillary Clinton view...
...Trent Lott's comments suggest that Clinton's effect has already been to induce Republicans like Lott to define Republicanism down...
...I mean, get real...
...He provides no evidence for this, and no criteria of fairness...
...The whole manner of thinking—or emot-ing—that informs Lott's response is Clintonian...
...Back then, Republicans sought to speak for the Gayla Zigos of the world...
...Where is the guy involved in this deal...
...He thinks "at a minimum she ought to get an honorable discharge...
...Presumably he May 20, 1997, media Q&A with Sen...
...Lott will now urge Secretary Cohen to "get real...
...But this device—hyperbole that is at once shameless and meaningless—is truly Clintonian...
...In Bill Clinton's America, politicians show personal empathy...
...The "so-called" Seventh Commandment apparently is not real...
...It is the essence of Bill Clinton's rhetorical style, and Trent Lott appropriates it effortlessly...
...The military's long-standing rules against fraternization do not address a real problem, it seems, only a so-called one...
...For the man, Marc Zigo, was of course not in the Air Force...
...And I think we're going to have to, you know, get involved in giving some more thought to how these issues like this are going to be handled...
...Now they have "gotten real...
...Mrs...
...He thinks he does understand...
...I'm not a member of the Armed Services committee...
...6. Lott threatens to raise the Kelly Flinn case with the secretary of defense: "If this is not worked out better than it looks like it is going to be worked out, I am going to take it up with him...
...You're still dealing with human beings...
...As National Review's Kate O'Beirne points out, Lott apparently believes that the GOP's gender-gap problem "will not be solved by appealing to traditional women, who value the virtues that the military (and few other institutions) still demand...
...I think at a minimum she ought to get an honorable discharge...
...Instead, the GOP will be courting feminists...
...Ronald Reagan tried never to use the first-person pronoun in public statements...
...Nothing is more characteristic of the cultural Left than its willingness to damage important institutions for fleeting political advantage...
...But Lott is being disingenuous...
...Where's the guy that was involved in this deal...
...This is Trent Lott's Joycelyn Elders moment...
...3. Lott does not simply argue that Kelly Flinn should be treated "fairly...
...Drug use is "real...
...Perhaps Sen...
...Lott's answers show that the Republican congressional leadership suffers from more than a failure of strategic intelligence or a loss of political confidence...
...Bill Clinton, however, has evolved...
...For Trent Lott may not know much about this case, but he does know that Republicans suffer from a gender gap...
...And I think it's very unfair...
...But it is a little thing—his brief comments responding to reporters' questions about Air Force Lieutenant Kelly Flinn, just a minute in length— that best illuminates the mindset of the Republican congressional leadership...
...The Clinton administration has learned to muffle this impulse and to respect the interests of institutions like the armed services...
...Lott must have been pleased to be praised the next day by the New York Times...
...They have adopted the attitudes of the Clinton administration circa 1993—long after a wised-up White House came to understand how politically disastrous these attitudes are...
...Lott's statement...
...Lott uses the first-person pronoun 19 times in his 20 sentences...
...Will no one step forward to defend the honor of Republican principles and the dignity of the conservative cause...
...In urging the military to "get real," Trent Lott's Republicanism is—finally—au courant...
...And I've got a lot of other questions about why the Air Force hasn't stepped up to this issue and dealt with it better...
...One might think that if Lott doesn't understand why Flinn is being punished, if he has "lots of questions," he would refrain from judging the fairness of the Air Force's proceedings...
...Secretary Cohen wasn't impressed...
...Yes, I think we do...
...My wife has a good question...
...Are we all Clinton Republicans now...
...5. We come here to the heart of Lott's complaint: that the military just doesn't get it...
...The Pentagon is not in touch with reality...
...And it was resented by many Americans—both as a symbolic assault on their mores and for its cavalier disregard for the actual requirements of the military as an institution...
...I tell you the Pentagon is not in touch with reality on this so-called question of fraternization...
...What does this mean...
...My wife has a good question...
...In Bill Clinton's America, political leaders emote, on the basis of vague impressions, and regardless of the damage they might do to instituWilliam Kristol is editor of'The Weekly Standard...
...Lott's casual assertion that the Air Force has dealt poorly with the Kelly Flinn case and that the Pentagon is "not in touch" is thus vintage Clintonism...
...Lott is concerned about accommodating them...
...Reality" must trump such rules...
...LOTT: I have not gotten into the details of what is involved here...
...Yet Clinton was willing to argue that it "is not good for society to legitimize drug use...
...The truth is that Gayla Zigo is probably the type of woman who, in reaction to the first two years of Clinton, went to the polls in 1994 and helped produce a GOP landslide and the first Republican Congress in 40 years...
...Contemporary sexual mores are what's real...
...I don't understand why she's being singled out and punished the way she is...
...It has lost its soul...
...Now Tricia Lott is an intelligent woman...
...Nothing...
...And what he thinks he understands—though he doesn't quite say it, because then it could be judged as a factual claim (another Clintonian device)—is that Kelly Flinn is being punished because she is a woman...
...Trent Lott QUESTION: Senator Lott, should Lieutenant Flinn get an honorable discharge...
...Now it is the Republican leadership that shows disdain for the military culture...
...Thus Lott speaks of "this so-called question of fraternization...
Vol. 2 • June 1997 • No. 38
