Almost fifty years ago, on the day my divorce became final, Hunter S. Thompson showed up at the Rolling Stone Washington Bureau—I was, remarkably, the Bureau Chief at the time—and said, “Gotta celebrate. Give me your keys and I promise you’ll wake up in your bed tomorrow morning.”
I wasn’t in much of a mood to celebrate. The marriage was a casualty of youth; the woman in question was, and is, a wonderful person. But this was Hunter, and every moment spent with that guy had a way of turning memorable. Actually, I’m not sure about the reliability of my memory in this instance and Tim Crouse, our Rolling Stone colleague and the author of The Boys on the Bus, probably remembers it differently (and more accurately). But here’s my version:
We started at Tim’s apartment, got kicked out of there by his girlfriend—for reasons I can’t remember—and wound up in a bar. Tim started telling stories about his days as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. He said that about half the dogs there were rabid and when you saw a stray in the street, you ran in the other direction. Hunter, waxing metaphysical as was his habit on occasion, wondered: “What percentage of the dogs would have to rabid for you not to run in the other direction?”
I started the bidding with a puckish 23%. “I’d still run,” Hunter said. I tried 18%. “Nope,” Hunter said…and we proceeded, laughing with each new bid, down to 5%. “Maybe,” Hunter allowed, “But it would depend on the dog in question.” Thus, The Mad Dog Principle was established and languished in my subconscious until the war in Iraq, when I realized that it applied to the insurgency there: All you needed was 5% of the populace to take up arms against you and you were in a world of hurt.
I thought about The Mad Dog Principle again this week as a handful of nutty Republicans exploded their caucus in the House of Representatives. Which led me to these deep thoughts about the nature and necessities of Sanity in these dangerous times:
The abiding principle of this newsletter is that Donald Trump can not be re-elected President, lest we face the possibility of losing our democracy. He represents everything loathsome about the human condition—selfishness, mendacity, ignorance, boorishness, brutality and the utter absence of empathy. He also represents the fondest hopes of about 25% of the Republican Party, which is pretty hefty in Mad Dog terms. (There’s another 20% who think he was a good President, but don’t want another dose; these people are our best chance to hurt Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire.)
There is a corollary Sanity Principle: anything that might increase the possibility of Donald Trump snaking his way to an electoral college victory—he won’t win the popular vote—is a bad thing. That means any and all third party efforts. That means No Labels, Bobby Kennedy Jr .and Cornel West. I am particularly concerned about West, the Green Party candidate who is following the Russia/Jill Stein path that gave Trump the presidency in 2016. The Russians concentrated their disinformatia campaign on the black communities in four cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; that campaign raised doubts about Hillary Clinton and plumped Jill Stein. Result: Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a Mad Dog sliver. Result: Trump won the election. In 2020, minus the Russians and Jill Stein, Biden won those three states. Result: Biden won the election. Last I checked, West was running at a very Mad Doggy five percent in Wisconsin, Michigan and several other states—thus tipping a prospective Trump-Biden contest toward the unthinkable.
I am boggled by the lack of attention that West has drawn from concerned members of the Sanity Caucus, especially when compared to focus on the No Labels effort. I am told enlightened Democrats—translation: cowardly fools—believe West will bask a bit and then withdraw from the race. What do you think the possibility is that this egomaniacal showboat will behave responsibly? Yeah, me neither. There needs to be a preemptive media strike, especially in the black community. Hakeem Jeffries and members of the Congressional Black Caucus—and the Progressive Caucus, and anyone else with a podium—need to speak up: West is a Mad Dog Menace.
But the path of Sanity is never straight. Ideology has the virtue, and vice, of foolish consistency; sanity, at times, bewilders itself. And so, I find myself supporting an entirely contradictory principle when it comes to Congress. As much as I am opposed to, and terrified by, the No Labels presidential fling, I find myself wishing that the Problem Solvers caucus—a No Labels project—had stepped in and protected the Speakership of Kevin McCarthy.
I believe Steve Schmidt had it right when he said of McCarthy:
“He is cynical, corrupt and lighter than helium. His vapidity is only exceeded by his neediness and thinly veiled narcissism.”
But this is about institutions not individuals. We need a functioning House of Representatives; we need to be liberated from the paralytic craziness of constant government shutdown threats. A convincing and rather sane, super-majority actually exists when it comes to issues like support for Ukraine and immigration reform; there are budgetary compromises that can be made. We cannot let the Republic be wagged by a handful of Mad Dogs. Bill Galston of Brookings reported this yesterday:
Republican members of the House Problem Solvers caucus, a well-established bipartisan group, reportedly begged their Democratic colleagues to support a grand bargain that would retain McCarthy as Speaker. The refusal of these Democrats, the most compromise-minded members of their party, to consider this option threatens to blow up the caucus.
This points to a second obstacle to bipartisanship: over the past decade, the muscle-memory of compromise has faded. Of the current members of the House, 185 Republicans and 149 Democrats have been elected since 2010, the year in which the current era of hyper-partisanship began. These newer members have never experienced a House in which the pursuit of agreement across party lines was part of the institution’s operating manual.
Now, I understand that Democrats are pissed off at McCarthy and rightly so. They remember Kevin My Kevin kissing a southerly portion of the Trump corpus after the January 6 rebellion. It is also near-unthinkable to support a man who is allowing a Seinfeld Impeachment—there is nothing there—of Joe Biden. And the constant string of puling concessions made to the Republican Mad Dog Caucus. The word on the Hill is that McCarthy made no attempt to talk to Hakeem Jeffries before the vote. (If true, Steve Schmidt overestimated McCarthy’s intelligence.)
I also understand the essential naïveté of my proposed Congressional Sanity Principle: Any Democrats who voted to support McCarthy would face opprobrium and sanctions. They might lose choice Committee assignments, funding from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; they might, at the margin, lose an election or two. But we’d have a functioning legislature.
Nobody said Sanity was going to be easy. But continuity, a solid foundation of mutually agreed-upon ground rules, is a necessity in a Republic. And there’s another thing: until a fundamental reform happens—Galston and Elaine Kamarck have proposed a 60% threshold to elect a Speaker, thus forcing bipartisanship—this chaos is going to happen again and again. It’s going to happen in November when government funding runs out. It will happen after that. I would like to see the Problem Solvers, along with other wise souls like the bipartisan military For Country caucus, flip the character of the house—create a system where a civilized majority governs from the center out. The best way to deal with Mad Dogs is to surround, impound and defang them.
Oh, by the way: Hunter was as good as his word. I woke up the next morning in my own bed, with no idea how I got there.
Our numbers are growing, but Sanity needs all the help it can get. Please consider this option:
I'm not a fan of Jill Stein, but I do wish people would stop saying she cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election.
Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes. Stein got just shy of 50,000 votes. Clinton would have to have won 90% of those to take the state. That's beyond unlikely, because many Stein voters just didn't see a difference between Trump and Clinton and would have stayed home. Some might even have voted for Trump. I'm not saying that's smart, but I am saying that's reality.
Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes. Stein got 31,000 votes. Clinton would have to have won nearly 75% of those. See Pennsylvania.
The math is a little friendlier to the Stein-as-spoiler argument in Michigan -- she got 31,000 votes, and Trump won by 11,000. But Trump would have won the election without Michigan. All he needed was Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Plus, if the 2 faithless Republican electors stay in line, he needs just one of those.)
And in all three states, the Gary Johnson-William Weld Libertarian ticket far outpolled Stein. You could make a case they pulled far more from Trump, but I'm not necessarily convinced.
Love the mad dog principle and the fact that it was coauthored by you and Hunter T makes it all the better. I Will pilfer.
I had to wince but not disagree with your assessment of 20% of Republicans being “mad dog” for Trump. But as a conservative, I am painfully aware of a corresponding (and probably greater) number of lefty loons on the other side. I despise Trump but consider Biden and the Democrats to be far more ruinous to the country. Trump is a jerk whose policies are decent, (but not optimal). Biden is a jerk whose policies are catastrophic for the country. Easy decision in the unhappy event that it comes to that.