Talking The Talk
Secretary of Defense appointee, Pete Hegseth, performed masterfully during his extremely contentious and hyper partisan Senate confirmation hearing. During that hearing, female members of the Armed Services Committee, carried on like angry hornets. At no time did they discuss very pertinent issues such as how Hegseth might increase military recruitment (now at very low levels), how he will modernize military technology, and how he will face threats from China and Russia! ALL the aggrieved women seemed to care about is the role of females in combat. Unfortunately all of them appeared incapable of differentiating between functioning in a combat zone (at which many women have performed admirably) and, instead, functioning in physical combat (at which they are not able to outperform males in general or their likely adversaries either). Kirsten Gillibrand (who, this time, was at least able to refrain from dropping “f-bombs” as she often does) and Maze Hirano (who has to be the most intellectually challenged Senator in history) and others, continued relentlessly slanted hyper partisan questions and statements.
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And, not to be outdone by the lady participants, male Senators such as Tim Kane and Adam Schiff added their own venom to an already poisonous stew.
In any case, while watching Major Hegseth respond to many loaded “questions” with determined aplomb, I was struck by how eloquent he was. And I then reflected on similar qualities in vice president elect J. D. Vance , Attorney General Pamela Bondi and others. It struck me what a refreshing change this was, with such eloquence having been missing from the Republican Party since the time of Ronald Reagan (who often had been called the “Great Communicator”). Among Democrats, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had verbal eloquence in spades. George H. W, Bush, George W. Bush, and even Donald Trump, not so much.
Although, I think we would all agree that what you do SHOULD be more important than what you say, in the realm of American politics, it seems that you not only need to “walk the walk,” but you’ve got to “talk the talk” too.
So let’s celebrate the return of verbal excellence in our newly elected representatives and hope that their verbal proficiency will help them carry out the enormous work that lies ahead.