Following her speech at CPAC last weekend, there have been a number of stories in trash generators like the Daily Beast and New York Magazine about Tulsi Gabbard’s alleged “journey” from Democrat to fanatical MAGA authoritarian and the like.
Not surprisingly, these stories have it backwards. It’s the Democrats, not Gabbard, that, beginning in 2016 with the Russiagate fiasco, have launched themselves on a journey toward authoritarianism at home and neoconservatism abroad.
Gabbard was one of the few in her party to stand up to the Clinton cabal, and she’s paid a bitter price. But unlike those in her former party, Gabbard has been nothing if not consistent, particularly on matters pertaining to foreign policy.
From the time I first interviewed her in June 2016, Gabbard has been a vocal and eloquent opponent of America’s serial misadventures abroad, and nowhere more so than when the Obama administration covertly launched a sinister attempt to overthrow the sovereign government of Syria—a government that posed no threat to the national security of this country and was, at the time, under attack by the very same Islamist forces that conspired to attack us on 9/11. This simple though ramifying truth was lost on too many of Gabbard’s erstwhile Democratic colleagues, who rallied like a pack of Pavlovian pups to Hillary Clinton’s war cry, “Assad Must Go.”
And again, with regard to the Neo-McCarthyism that deformed and debased the Democratic Party, Gabbard was among the very few to look askance at the idea of waging a new Cold War against Russia.
Gabbard reiterated her opposition to the new Democratic War Machine during her ill-fated run for the presidency in 2019–2020. At a small fundraiser for her presidential campaign at the Cleveland Park home of two well-known and well-liked pillars of the D.C. establishment, Gabbard expressed a kind of bemused disbelief that her party had decided to mark her out as a kind of extremist. Perhaps in ways unseen, the threats and smears issued forth from the DNC (and ultimately, Hillary Clinton herself) took their toll on the young candidate—but they did not succeed in silencing her.
Gabbard’s brave antiwar consistency (minus her tolerance for Israeli aggression, which is shared by, among others, Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Joseph R. Biden), is why Trump needs her in his administration—just not as his VP.
It is widely, and probably correctly, assumed that thanks to the Dobbs decision, the recent Alabama IVF case, and what is viewed by many as his Stone Age attitude towards the fairer sex, Trump will need a reassuring, telegenic, appealing woman as his Number 2. And while Gabbard could that bill, someone like Kristi Noem can just as easily fill the role as Trump’s Stepford Wife.
No. Should Trump win in November, Tulsi Gabbard’s talents will be needed elsewhere. This is especially so since Trump’s first term was a disaster in terms of foreign policy appointments, which included one bloodthirsty neocon hawk after another—a dishonor roll including but not limited to Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Mike Esper, John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams.
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Instead of whiling away the days in the Naval Observatory, Gabbard should be called upon to make full use of her talents as national security adviser, secretary of defense, secretary of state, or director of central intelligence. Gabbard would be a formidable opponent to the crypto-neocons with which Trump has too often surrounded himself.
The 32nd Vice President of the United States, John Nance Garner, famously declared that the vice presidency wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm p*ss.”
It was as true then as it is today.