The fact of the matter is that post-America's current state of polarization is not just a tug of war between left and right, or even a three-way struggle, behind left, right and Trumpism. The more basic plight of human beings generally - the inability to get out of their own way - is an element that's had a lot of influence on events lately.
The currently popular way of framing the Republican party's role in this scenario is that it is weakened in such a tug of war by the fact that, while Trumpism is decidedly ascendant within the GOP, an opposition, represented by the likes of Ben Sasse, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer, Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan, refuses to concede any kind of finality regarding the outcome of the standoff. It's a largely accurate depiction, but one more factor has to be considered: jaw-droppingly stupid decisions by various Trumpists that are immediately recognized as horrible optics by the general public. The antics of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor-Greene certainly qualify, but this week Senator Ted Cruz of Texas blew their doors off.
His Cancun fiasco was such an egregious unforced error as to be surreal. The Texas Senator is not a stupid man. He was recognized by faculty and fellow students alike at Harvard Law School as a formidable intellect. His command of the Constitution is widely recognized. While his attempts eight or nine years ago to overturn the Affordable Care Act were arguably quixotic to the point of being ill-advised, they were based on the principle that the free market and not government should address glitches in the production and consumption of health care. The list he put forth when running for president in 2016 of departments and agencies he'd target for dismantling was likewise bold to the point of improbability, but it was born of principle.
Like many a Republican politician, he's displayed a character-level deterioration during the Trump years. Still, nothing could have prepared anyone for the stunning lapse of basic judgement he exhibited this week. Every aspect of it - not sticking around his home state to coordinate relief efforts and engage in other concrete manifestations of compassion, leaving the country during a pandemic, blaming his daughters for the decision to take off for Cancun, the fancy resort that was his destination, and leaving his pet poodle alone in a freezing house - was a public-relations nightmare.
It mystifies.
Then again, so does the entire cooking-the-nursing-home-numbers scandal in which New York governor Andrew Cuomo is embroiled. It has opened a floodgate of revelations about his personal conduct while in office that will be daunting, to say the least, to recover from. It brings out into the harsh light of day the mutual animosity between him and New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio:
Threatening Queens Assemblymember Ron Kim (D) sounds like something New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) would do, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D).
The New York mayor spoke to MSNBC's Morning Joe on Thursday after Kim alleged that Cuomo called him to "threaten my career" amid a growing scandal involving the state's handling of information on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. De Blasio, who has often clashed with Cuomo, expressed support for Kim on MSNBC.
"That's classic Andrew Cuomo," de Blasio said. "A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls. The bullying is nothing new."
And it's a long-standing modus operandi:
Such is life on the wrong side of Cuomo, whose credo for those who stand in his path was coined early in his first term by one of their own: “We operate on two speeds here: Get along, and kill," Steve Cohen, then Cuomo’s top aide, said in an exchange first reported by the Connecticut Post in 2011.
The characterization, which came during a contentious discussion with former Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy’s team, has come to define the Queens native’s modus operandi to the point of becoming a cliché in New York political circles. (POLITICO on Thursday confirmed the 2011 exchange with multiple people around Malloy at the time.)
The proverb has even become something akin to a badge of honor for some Cuomo staffers in the years since, cocksure in their belief of their boss' singular ability to bend the state government apparatus to fulfill his vision of Democratic politics.
On the other side of the continent, California governor Gavin Newsom has done his best to contend for the prize of Most Astoundingly Foolish Move By A Democrat With A Formerly Promising Future, with last November's maskless lunch at The French Laundry, a Napa Valley restaurant that is as upscale as it gets. It has resulted in a recall effort that has a real chance of succeeding.
It's probably best advised not to be too hasty about using commonalities among these situations to draw conclusions, but it does seem that ambition is clearly at play in all of them. The brass ring in politics must have the power to skew one's judgement in a particularly powerful way.
How the moves on the part of all these figures could have been avoided will haunt them and their supporters in that distinctive way that anyone living with deep regret knows all about. One more five-minute pause before acting, one more conversation with a trusted confidant who is permitted to offer an opposing viewpoint, could well have changed the trajectory of personal fate and, indeed, history.
We see, once again, that fallibility is baked into who we are as human creatures. Resisting its predominance in our psyches is no easy task, and probably cannot be done without reliance on a presence wholly other than ourselves, or any person around us.
These people probably know that in the core of their beings and would give anything to turn back the clock and give that quiet presence its proper heed.
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