Political Theater and Consequences

🎶So, Andy, did you hear about this one?/Tell me are you locked in the punch?/Hey, Andy, are you goofing on Donald? Hey, baby…are you falling for this stunt?🎶

We can officially count him as a swamp convert. The venerable Andrew McCarthy of National Review has been taken in by an obviously staged production. I would understand incorrigible Trump-hater Kevin Williamson being a sucker. Or even the mag’s carpet-swatch-haired editor who wrote a book-length defense of nationalism while trying to tank the most nationalist U.S. presidential candidate in modern times.

But Andy? The guy who exposed all the seedy inner workings of Russiagate? He really doesn’t think there’s something up the Democrats’ sleeve with this latest poli-skit?

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investi….zzzzz…Sorry! Nodded off there trying to get through the official appellation. Let’s try again: the (*inhale*) U.S. House Selection Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (*exhale*) called an emergency hearing last week to get a witness on record before she spontaneously combusted, or was abducted by aliens, or was sucked through an intergalactic wormhole.

Or because of ambiguous threats to her safety, which weren’t disclosed or elaborated on, but simply presented prima facie by the Committee.

So who’s the witness and did she have the goods? Well, if you’re a cynical observer like yours truly and think the Committee’s entire purpose is to both entertain lushy Beltwayers and bolster Democratic prospects this fall, the answer is a resounding “YES” to the former and a quiet “no” to the latter.

The witness under the pin spots was Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Despite being a hand of a hand, two degrees away from the Orange Kahuna, she provided valuable prestige-drama-level testimony that got the town all a-Twitterin’. She painted a picture of an intemperate hotspur of a president who desperately wanted to break off from state-assigned protection and subsume himself within the angry mob he mustered outside the White House.

In her illustration, Hutchinson provided the perfect comic-strip of immature inanity. After Trump gave his prepared remarks to gathering avant-rioters at the Eclipse, he was ushered into a presidential conveyance (the exact vehicle is unclear). Secret Service, already suspicious the MAGA mob’s intentions were not wholly virtuous, wanted to whisk the President back to the West Wing. Trump had other ideas. After a rockstar performance, he wanted to stage dive into the hyped-up crowd as it fatefully approached the Capitol.

That’s when things got physical, according to Hutchinson. S.S. detail agent Robert Engel refused Trump’s request. The rebuked President didn’t take the insubordination in stride. In what sounds like a scene out of slapstick revue, Trump made a go at the steering wheel while also, somehow, trying to ring Engel’s neck, all while shouting about being “the f’ing president”. He apparently had to be restrained until all parties cooled off, and slinked back to the White House.

Talk about made for TV! We all knew Trump was a multitasker, guzzling Diet Coke while tweeting at the same time. And occasionally even governing. But trying to choke someone while gripping on the wheel of a moving vehicle as another man works the pedals — that takes some real skill. Four more years of that kind of presidential ambidexterity and North Korea would have surrendered its nukes and embraced liberal capitalism!

Hutchinson’s anecdote made for great Committee fodder. It also made for great Trump-derangement fan service, as if a lost episode of “Drumpf Ruins the Country — Again!” from FanFiction.Net was made manifest. At last, real, tangible proof Donald Trump is unfit to sit in the Oval! And a hilarious physical-comedy sketch to boot! A pareidolia of puerile unprofessionalism in practice.

The usual suspects had their imaginations (predictably) staggered. Never Trumpers, mass-media anchors, the stale stock of late-night comedian-moralists, and Andrew Sullivan all declared the 45the President properly piked and kaput. Forget the six-odd years we’ve been told Trump was Lonesome Rhodes in disguise, and would never come within a mile of his sweaty, grime-stained supporters.

More surprisingly, some Trump-neutral parties were apparently suckered — including McCarthy, who has steadily maintained the January 6th shenanigans never amounted to insurrection. He called Hutchinson’s testimonial “devastating” before dashing off two more missives raising suspicions about the whole hearsay hullabaloo. Which, given the mounting discrepancies in the sordid tale, is good CYA explication.

What wheels are already falling off Trump-take-the-wheelgate? Confusion over whether the President was being ferried in “the Beast” with its bulletproof driver-passenger partition or a normal S.U.V.; the Committee’s lack of follow-up questioning in light of the testimony; the Secret Service disputing the event; that the entire ordeal was pure tittle-tattle spread by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato.

Even with all these narrative conflicts, This Town ate it up, including people who should know better. The question is: Why? Why gobble up an obviously error-ridden yarn? Was it all just cheap political sniping?

It’s worse, much worse than exploitative partisanship. Like Disney producing a sequel of a panned prequel trilogy to a beloved trilogy with an already disappointing sequel trilogy that nobody asked for and perverts the original canon, the Jan. 6th Committee is trying to cash in on the feral imaginings of political players who use the phrase “MAGA Reich” unironically. The hiring of a legacy-media producer to oversee the first televised hearing was the first giveaway. But now rhapsode-like witnesses are being dragged into hearings with fantastical tales that can hardly bear scrutiny.

I get summer TV schedules are often a bore, but we deserve better entertainment than embellished oral histories on C-SPAN. The purpose of this Committee is to determine the actual events of that disgraceful day, and how culpable the Trump Administration was in the melee. Instead we’re getting mean-girl gossip, which livens Hill cocktail gatherings but makes a mockery of serious statesmanship.

On that point, the anarcho-capitalists in the audience may lend a hearty “here, here!” And I’m half inclined to join them. But the shallowness and laziness of presenting obviously fabricated farces as congressionally recorded facts has a touch of desperation, if only because much of the swamp class actually believes the caca del toro doesn’t reek of mendacity.

Those Washington players who understand the distancing effect of political theater are only happy to play along with tall tales that malign the other side. They call it “oppo research” or “campaign tactics” or simply “the game.” Which is all great trolly fun, until Congress gets ransacked, Supreme Court justices attract would-be assassins, and pregnancy centers get firebombed.

There’s a price to pay for playing with political passion. Just as the Parisians at the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. Or as conservative-operative-turned-Democratic-shill Tim Miller said in a recent interview: “[W]hen your whole career and your whole job is centered on smearing people and creating negative news that inflames the passions of the voters, how can you then be surprised when people become very inflamed and come to think of the other side as evil?”

In short, kayfabe comes at a price when people aren’t in on the joke. Thankfully, most Americans view Washington as more “Veep” than “West Wing,” more tragicomedy than Senātus Rōmānus. The trouble is, it’s the serious ones who stake out a senator’s house in the middle of the night with a loaded gun — usually in the name of fending off fascism.

If a straight-shooting sharp guy like Andrew McCarthy can’t see a fictitious hatchet job for what it is, what hope is there for the less discerning? Our political tummlers are playing with fire. We’ll be lucky should a conflagration not break out before the curtain falls.