Kipling, Suetonius, and Douglas Adams

In the Aftermath of the 2024 Election

Since the presidential election two weeks ago, three things have happened: first, the US had a clear electoral and popular vote victor; second, the world - despite many thinking it would do so - did not come to an end; and third, the president-elect has announced a series of nominations for cabinet-level posts which is due him (under the first fact) as with any president but also seems to have confirmed for many that the second fact is wrong and the world is indeed coming to an end. It is, however, not about to come to an end by means of a presidential election. But I leave open the possibility that at any day the earth could be destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass (the lesson here is to always know where your towel is, eat peanuts and drink six pints of bitter regularly just in case.)

In an earlier Substack post, I mentioned that US politics has become much like a political metronome, swinging harder from one side to the next. If it’s consistent then in the 2028 election, the US could well elect Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, by then, would be eligible under every Constitutional criteria and have ten years of congressional experience, more than Barack Obama when he ran in 2008. Plus, she has national recognition already - not a mean feat. If any followers at this point are saying “never,” I offer this: how many “nevers” in American politics have been elected?

Aside from the Mika/Joe trip to Mar-a-Lago, we’ve witnessed something more disturbing in the Force, namely the level to which individuals are putting an election ahead of family or friendly relationships. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there is no political party to put ahead of personal relationships. One of my favorite writers is Rudyard Kipling; perhaps his most recalled poem is “If” whose first words particularly offer sage advice in the aftermath of the election: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” Admittedly, it’s not my favorite Kipling poem. That would be “Recessional” whose line “far called, our navies melt away” I’ve used in a few articles in the past twenty years. Kipling also helped me turn from a graduate experience.

In January 2002, I had been mobilized to the Office of Naval Intelligence for several months. The work pace had somewhat normalized and I decided with a colleague to take a graduate course in history from George Mason University one night a week. On our first night we were handed the syllabus to this course, “England and the Age of Empire.” We both thought it might be interesting to have context for the work we were doing that was related to the Middle East. The professor had distributed the reading material for the course: a book about Victorian prostitutes, another titled “London’s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism, 1870-1930,” and a book by or about the novelist Jane Eyre. As she completed her introduction she said she was open to other reading suggestions. No shy, I raised my hand and suggested that “since we’re in the middle of a war in Afghanistan and we were studying 19th century England, perhaps we might add Rudyard Kipling to the reading list since he wrote about it as well.” She eyed me then said, “you’re in the military, aren’t you?” It was truly an astute observation - my colleague and I were still in uniform since we drove straight from ONI to the classroom. “Yes, I am.” Then she said with a contemptible little smile, “I don’t think you’ll like this course - it’s not about guns and killing.” I thanked her, looked to my right and we both stood up and walked out of the room. The following week we were enrolled in more professionally applicable courses at National Defense University.

But I digress…

I have not said how I voted as I think voting is a personal thing; what I have posted about the election was my experience working the ballots for the first time. I volunteered (I only was told later that we were paid by the city for the day). What struck me were the thousands of fellow citizens walking into the auditorium, sacrificing their time to do their basic civic duty regardless of whom they were voting for. Every citizen had a voice that day.

It’s also why I have been and remain an unenrolled (independent) voter for thirty years. Last weekend one of my oldest friends at a dinner party half-jokingly said, “shit or get off the pot.” Being independent isn’t being indecisive. You can evaluate on your own, set the criteria for policies and candidate choices on your own, and - more importantly for me - call balls and strikes as issues come up with either team. It is with that context that I offer commentary on a couple of proposed nominees which appeared to come from nowhere and apparently, if talk radio and others are to be believed, were intended to “shake up” or “tear down” foundations of government. Political parties have historically mistaken what their mandates are for. In most elections, it’s two or three key issues, less about the personalities. This year it was about the border and inflation affecting home finances. And yet, if “past is prologue”, the Republican Party will fall victim strategic overreach and believe that it was about much more. With that - again as we have seen in the past - the political metronome will swing again as middle America responds in the mid-term elections. Given how close the majority is in the House, it may already be a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will regain the House after 2026.

It begins with those few nominations that have already caused controversy. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Democratic friends who have yelled at me because the sky was falling because of these nominations and what they portend. While it’s true that the Senate has a Republican majority, the Senate is a separate body from the President, regardless of what any opposition suggestion - so it has always been. Even Franklin Roosevelt could not get a court-packing scheme approved, for one. If I recall correctly - and readers are welcomed to correct me - that former Speaker Tip O’Neill recounted that immediately after the 1976 election, he and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield went to the White House to meet with President Carter. They asked how they could help him. Carter was apparently dismissive suggesting that he was fine on his own and he could get everything done. The following years were not “everything.”

The same is true for nominations. There is always a check on the system. When former US Senator and former Senate Armed Services Chairman John Tower was nominated for Secretary of Defense in 1989, his nomination was defeated 47-53. While it’s true the Democrats were in the majority, it was highly unusual to reject someone who sat next to so many of them. There is something called senatorial courtesy, but not in this case. Another case was the defeat of President Eisenhower’s nominee for the Department of Commerce, Lewis Strauss, popularized recently in the Oppenheimer movie.

Consequently, people concerned about the election might consider watching how the play unfolds in the first act. It may be that the nominations are not approved or simply be withdrawn. Some in the media have suggested - strongly - that a couple of nominations are intended as a warning. While inadvisable in what should be a nomination process of gravitas, it isn’t unprecedented. My favorite example is the case of Caligula.

Caligula had a favorite horse, Incitatus. Through history the story has come down that Caligula made Incitatus, whom he dressed in royal purple robes, a consul to demonstrate to the Senators that anyone could have a high position. He was sticking it to the elite. However, the story may have been apocryphal. There apparently is no record of Incitatus actually becoming a consul and the stories may have originated with later Roman historians such as Suetonius, whose works were the basis for Robert Graves’ historical novel, “I, Claudius.”

That book was later made into a 1976 British television series by the same name with Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Brian Blessed as Augustus, Sean Phillips as the Machiavellian Livia, and a young(er) Patrick Stewart as the murderous Praetorian Sejanus. It also had John Hurt as the maniacally evil Caligula. It’s well worth your time to watch this series. It’s about a dysfunctional family seeking political power.

Which brings us back to the ongoing nominations. We have already, as I suggested before in conversations, pushback or some cautionary resistance from Senators. This is the beauty of the system the Constitution’s framers put in place. Each Senator has to balance loyalty to party, to the state, and to their own interests. Sometimes those align; sometimes they don’t. Again, watch “I, Claudius” to watch political machinations and how they collide with others.

A Secretary of Defense has already been proposed and given my admitted parochialism for the Navy (with apologies to my father who was in the Fourth Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge) that is the branch I served in and out of uniform for the better part of thirty years.

Once a SecDef - whoever that is - is in place, then we’ll likely see nominations for the Secretaries of the Army, Air Force, and Navy. If Hegseth is confirmed, I would not be surprised to see Medal of Honor Recipient David Bellavia nominated for Secretary of the Army (and David’s a great guy.)

For the Navy? Who knows. There are several who would be clearly qualified on day one to serve as SecNav but given the unpredictability of some of the nominations it could well be someone few have heard of. We can only hope that a SecNavy would be nominated and confirmed in a more timely fashion than in recent administrations.

A few years ago, I put these graphs (and others) together to get a sense of the historical nominations. Until the consolidation of the military branches under the new Department of Defense formed in 1947, the Navy had been a Cabinet-level position. As readers can see in the graphs below, the SecNav was a very early choice in each administration after Andrew Jackson until George H.W. Bush.

This second shift is also likely due to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 which further diluted the powers of the various military branches by consolidating more power under jointness. Consequently, the naming of Navy secretaries quickly did not seem particularly necessary. President Biden now holds the record for confirming a Navy Secretary at 201 days, but his predecessor, Donald Trump, previously held the record at 195 days. If the reader is curious about how this compares to other branches, here they are:

What does all this mean? Wait. Watch. Believe that the system largely works because it reflects our differences within the country, the means by which we can work together but also how the government systems check each other when necessary and why the framers, according to George Washington, created the Senate, to cool the House just as a saucer is meant to cool hot tea. The same can be said of the Senate’s relationship with any president.

And perhaps in the Senate press gallery, Ford Prefect - another illegal alien - will change the language in the new edition of his tome from “harmless” to “mostly harmless.”