Tuberville’s hold on military promotions
Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville is getting his 15 minutes of fame. He’s getting it for making Congress even more partisan and dysfunctional than usual. But that’s the point.
Tuberville is holding up promotions for over 250 military officers. The Pentagon subsidizes out-of-state travel for reproductive healthcare, including abortion. He’s protesting that policy. And he vows to continue doing so until the Pentagon ends it.
Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, whose own nomination to become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could be held up in the Senate, said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday that the hold creates challenges that affect service members now and into the future.
In a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren [Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin] wrote, ‘Never before has one Senator prevented the Department of Defense from managing its officer corps in this manner, and letting this hold continue would set a perilous precedent for our military, our security, and our country.’
(CBS News, July 11, 2023)
Of course, military promotions are not only about rank or title. They impact the livelihoods, careers, and well-being of those committed to protecting our nation. That’s why holding them up also affects military readiness.
But, like all MAGA Republicans, Tuberville couldn’t care less. The impact on the military, let alone Congress, be damned. The media attention he’s getting is all that matters.
Tuberville’s hold and white nationalism
Turberville is a MAGA Republican. And, as with all MAGA Republicans, racism fuels almost everything he does. In this case, his fumbling over the definition of White nationalism is a dead giveaway.
Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday backed off his defense of white nationalists, telling reporters in the Capitol that white nationalists ‘are racists.’
Tuberville’s brief comment in the hallway, after a regular weekly lunch with his GOP Senate colleagues, follows several media interviews in which he has repeatedly declined to describe white nationalists as racist.
(CNN, July 11, 2023)
Color me cynical, but I don’t believe in coincidences. Tuberville’s refusal to call White nationalism racist reflects willful ignorance. But his refusal also betrays a simmering resentment towards the military’s top brass.
Defense Secretary Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff nominee Brown are Black. I suspect Tuberville resents them being in those positions. That is, just as White nationalists resented Barack Obama being president of the United States.
Autocratic stunts making a mockery of democratic rule
Tuberville is a symptom of an insidious disease affecting democratic governance. It’s autocratic governance that allows one man to up promotions like this. Especially when doing so harms the general welfare of a democratic country. (Yes, it’s always a man pulling these political stunts.)
Tuberville can do this because the Senate abides by the fiction of “unanimous consent.” This allows it to conduct much of its business by voice vote. Of course, that includes confirming military promotions. But all it takes is one senator to voice objection to gum up the works. And that allows any senator to extract self-interested concessions for their vote.
Incidentally, unanimous consent also affected Finland and Sweden’s applications to join NATO. It enabled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to hold up their accession for over a year.
But, in the spirit of democracy, it’s high time we changed unanimous consent rules. We should replace them with supermajority rules. That would mean only a two-thirds or three-quarters vote. And this should apply even to court cases that call for unanimous votes.
Supermajority rules would be more consistent with democratic rule. And they would prevent the likes of Tuberville and Erdogan from autocratic grandstanding.
Again, I suspect racial bias is animating Tuberville’s hold on these military promotions. The unanimous consent rule is enabling him to do so. And it’s making a mockery of American democracy.