Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) continues to be an enigma. The retiring Senator delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate which, I’m happy to say, echoes two of the themes of this blog, and in language eloquent to its purpose. From the CNN transcript:
Mr. President [I believe this is a traditional reference to the President of the Senate, not President Trump – Hue], near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.
… our freedom has been predicated on truth. A dive right to the heart of the matter, isn’t it, the recognition that the farther we permit ourselves to stray from truth in search of egotistical fantasies, the harder we’re going to crash to the ground – eventually. And if we crash hard enough, we may lose everything.
And he follows up with another pointed observation:
As the distinguished former member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” During the past year, I am alarmed to say that Senator Moynihan’s proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history.
It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.
And so he connects the importance of an adherence – a slavish adherence, to borrow a phrase – to truth and reality, to sustaining the democracy so important to our lives.
Connected, but separate, he then connects the fake news epithet, vile and self-centered as it is, with danger to our democracy:
Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.
This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward — despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.
I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of “fake news” are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of US based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice.
And for those who would still mutter about the mainstream media, he makes a key observation:
Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don’t.
A phenomenon about which I blogged just today here.
So why is Senator Flake an enigma? His Trump score, supplied by FiveThirtyEight as of this writing, remains 90.7%. He has not, as far as I know, rejected a single judicial nominee sent to the Senate by the Trump Administration. So while I cannot help but applaud his words, his actions speak of a continued allegiance to the very Party which sent a man, whom he obviously despises, to the White House. He would not betray his conservative principles by voting against poorly written legislation such as the AHCA, which failed, or the Tax change bill, which passed, and certainly not by rejecting those judicial nominees who are obviously unqualified for the judiciary.
But he didn’t.
His may be a call to an important bulwark of our nation, currently under attack by a defective, self-interested Executive, but his failure to bolster his concerns with actions is deeply disappointing.
And go read his speech. It’s worth a read if you don’t understand why not everyone doesn’t condemn the mainstream media. And it’s not, as our ancestors might have called it, a stemwinder.
