Regret, Thy Name Is Hawley. And Murkowski. And Musk.

New York Times

6 days ago

Is Senator Josh Hawley having second thoughts?
Sure looks that way. Last week, a mere 14 days after the Missouri Republican did as he was told and voted for President Trump's megabill, he introduced legislation that would counter that monstrosity's cuts to Medicaid and repair the very damage he'd just endorsed. It redefines the flip-flop. And reeks of regret.
So does Senator Thom Tillis's recent decision not to seek re-election. Both in and after his announcement of that, the North Carolina Republican wrestled with what Congress under Trump had become, with the president's broken promises and bad judgment, with his own indulgence of that. He told the CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who ascended to that position by dint of Tillis's final-hours capitulation to Trump's bullying — was 'out of his depth.' If only that had been predictable! I salute Tillis's candor, no matter how belated. But I see it as something else, too: atonement.
There's a lot of that going around, as politicians and others who submitted to Trump reckon with the toll of that obeisance. The president may well be notching legislative victory after victory as a meek Congress abdicates its responsibilities and a cowardly Supreme Court looks the other way. But I sense a countervailing current.
'What have I done?' are the words in the thought bubbles above more and more people who have grudgingly and not so grudgingly supported Trump.
To judge by some polling, that includes voters; in a recent, fascinating Gallup survey, they gave him poor marks even for his handling of immigration, and that's his signature issue. They wanted a more secure border, yes. But suspending civil liberties and feeding migrants to swamp creatures? That wasn't high on their wish lists.
Lowering the cost of living was, and yet, as Colby Smith recently noted in The Times, 'Inflation accelerated in June as President Trump's tariffs started to leave a bigger imprint on the economy.' Started is the key word there. 'The June data still reflects only the initial impact of Mr. Trump's global trade war,' Smith added.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists who reveled in Trump's encouragement of their wildest fantasies feel jilted by his sudden command that they erase Jeffrey Epstein from their cognitive hard drives. As the tawdry twists in the Epstein tale keep coming, Trump's most obliged defenders are being driven to exhaustion. Vice President JD Vance responded to The Wall Street Journal's report that Trump had once written and doodled a special smutty, predators-in-arms birthday greeting to Epstein with a social media post that asked: 'Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?'
Does anyone honestly believe it doesn't? We're talking Mr. Grab-Them-By-The-You-Know-What here. And Vance is giving off more than a whiff of panic, which is kissing cousins with regret.
It's the Vances and Hawleys and Tillises who interest me most. The buyer's remorse that more than a few voters feel is a common condition when politicians don't deliver; some of Trump's allies are in the grip of a different ailment. Theirs was a willed gullibility — they have always known deep down who Trump is. They wagered that they could live with that. They made a Faustian bargain, abetting him so that he didn't eviscerate them. They just didn't understand the full price they'd pay.
Elon Musk miscalculated. Thought his billions and his brilliance (in his own mind) inoculated him in a way unavailable to lesser mortals. Persuaded himself that Trump, who is steadfast and disciplined about exactly nothing, was steadfast about fiscal discipline. Musk's regret is so intense he's plotting a new political party to flex it.
To console and redeem themselves, Republican lawmakers are creating a whole new Kama Sutra of contortions, whereby they justify (or even nullify) yes votes with postscripts and asterisks such as Hawley's newly proposed legislation and Lisa Murkowsi's plea — after she, too, voted for Trump's big beautifulness — that the House perform major surgery on it. Sorry, Senator Murkowski, that patient was dead, and you knew it: Remorse and shame were etched on your face as you sought to explain yourself.
Tillis last week imagined pulling a Hawley himself. 'I suspect we're going to find out there are some things that we're going to regret,' he said on the Senate floor in the course of joining all but two other Senate Republicans to vote for a rescissions package that allowed Trump to claw back billions of dollars that Congress had previously appropriated. 'And I suspect that when we do we'll have to come back and fix it.' So regret is now baked in? Pacify the president now, mitigate the fallout later?
Unfortunately for Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, there's no do-over for blessing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment as secretary of health and human services. Cassidy, a physician, grilled Kennedy during his confirmation hearing, then pronounced himself satisfied that Kennedy was trustworthy on vaccines.
Oops. Kennedy went ahead and fired all 17 members of the C.D.C.'s vaccine advisory panel. Their replacements included prominent vaccine critics. And Cassidy was left to sputter on social media that the new group's first meeting 'should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation — as required by law — including those with more direct relevant expertise.'
I'm not sure whether to be heartened that Cassidy and Tillis have snapped to (at least somewhat) or heartsick that they suffocated their better judgment in the first place. I do know that the regrets — and the ranks of the regretful — will only grow from here.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Autopian, Matt Hardigree explained one carmaker's advantage: 'You don't buy a Subaru so much as you ascend into your final form as an outdoorsy Subaru owner when a ray of light beams down from the nearest REI, and all your clothes vanish from your body and are replaced by Patagonia.' (Thanks to Carol Goland of Granville, Ohio, for spotting this.)
In The Wall Street Journal, Rich Cohen remembered his excitement, as a boy, when the ice cream bonanza of Mister Softee jingled into his life: 'The truck was a revelation, great in the way of the bookmobile but without the pain of learning. What thrilled me was the idea that this sweet thing could turn up like a messiah amid the blast furnace of summer, that you could join a crowd of kids giving it chase, that it could redeem an otherwise aimless day.' (Henry Pinkney, Farmington Hills, Mich.)
In The London Review of Books, Patricia Lockwood qualified her feelings about Sylvia Plath's husband, the poet Ted Hughes, after reading some of Plath's reflections: 'It is not that I have no sympathy for Hughes. I have immense sympathy for him when Plath describes her shrimp casseroles.' (William Wood, Edmonton, Alberta)
In The Dallas Morning News, Robert Wilonsky reported on the tensions when a developer met with residents of the northwest Dallas area where he wants to put up scores of new townhouses: 'It took, like, three minutes for the town hall to devolve into shouts, accusations, murmurs, boos. Three minutes for friends and neighbors to start speaking in fluent Internet Comment.' (Dorit Suffness, Dallas)
In The Athletic, Jayson Stark identified the special purpose of the Philadelphia Phillies player Kyle Schwarber as 'whomping baseballs' that always threaten 'to land either in somebody's cheesesteak or in a crater on the moon — whichever gets in the way first.' (Leslie Ferreira, Studio City, Calif.)
In The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg fretted the automotive implications of an A.I. chatbot's recent Nazi-friendly meltdown (and made clever reference to an old Stephen King novel and, separately, a classic Disney movie): 'Elon Musk announced this week that all Teslas will be equipped with the new version of Grok. I don't think this means Teslas will start targeting Jews in intersections, like a souped-up Christine or Goebbels-Mode Herbie the Hate Bug, to deal with the 'problem' it sees 'every damn time.' But I do think Grok encouraged a lot of people who think that way. And some of those people drive.' (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.)
In The New Yorker, Hanif Abdurraqib explored the scrutiny of Zohran Mamdani: 'I tend to find Islamophobia unspectacular. That doesn't mean I don't also find it insidious and of serious consequence. I simply imagine it, like other prejudices, as a kind of ever-present static in the American psyche, tuned lower at times and then growing cacophonous with even a light touch of the volume dial.' (Hollis Rose Birnbaum, Chicago)
In The Times, John McWhorter questioned evolutions of language that are driven by political correctness: 'Again and again we create new terms hoping to get past negative associations with the old ones, such as 'homeless' for 'bum.' But after a while the negative associations settle like a cloud of gnats on the new terms as well, and then it's time to find a further euphemism. With no hesitation I predict that 'unhoused person' will need replacement in about 2030.' (Wim Kimmerer, Berkeley, Calif., and Lisa O'Melia, Norwalk, Conn., among many others)
Also in The Times, David Litt described the cultural and partisan divide between him and his brother-in-law: 'It was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim.' Litt recommended communication, not contempt, in the face of such differences. 'In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn't a betrayal of principles — it's an affirmation of them,' he wrote. (Kate Rosenbaum, Richmond, Va.)
Alissa Wilkinson remarked that the ranting of an old man in the new movie 'Eddington' makes sense when the date is stamped onscreen — and situates him in the middle of pandemic lockdowns: 'By late May 2020, even the most unflappable among us felt one raisin short of a fruitcake.' (Phillip Schulz, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Lisa Lerer recognized the 'long and storied history of over-interpreting New York elections as barometers of the national mood.' The Democratic Party, she added, 'should spend more time thinking about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan than the Upper West Side.' (Carol Henton, San Mateo, Calif.)
Finally, in The Santa Barbara Independent, Nick Welsh distilled his objection to Trump's megabill: 'It shreds the safety net for the poor in order to give added bounce to the trampolines of the wealthy.' (Tom Hinshaw, Santa Barbara, Calif.)
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On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) Note
The rain is coming down with the kind of ferocity that set Noah in motion. The thunder is twice as loud. And I'm driving. Not because I'm going anywhere. Because I have a companion whose quirks, most of them delightful, include sheer terror during summer storms. Our Honda is her haven.
There's no discussing meteorology with a dog, no assuring her that she's safe at home in her bed and the world isn't ending. Regan knows an apocalypse when she hears one — and she has great ears.
Whenever the skies open and lightning strikes, she paces furiously. Whines at me, incessantly. Nudges me, over and over. It's painful to behold. It's impossible to ignore. Forget writing. Forget reading. She won't allow it.
Her panic can last anywhere from 20 minutes to four hours, depending on the storm and on whether I've given her the sedatives that the vet prescribed. But those doggy downers work only some of the time, and I don't want to administer too many too often. I've tried squeezing her into one of those thunder shirts, to no avail. I've tried loud, clangorous music to drown out the cacophony of the weather. Doesn't work.
Then, about two and a half weeks ago, when we were getting serious thunder and significant rain in my area of North Carolina on a daily or near-daily basis, I had a thought. The car! It's cavelike, so Regan might feel protected. The vibration of its movement, coupled with the hum of its engine, might somehow distract or console her. I suppose I had some buried memory of friends telling me that they'd pacified howling infants with such vehicular therapy, though I wasn't conscious at the time of the parallel.
I put Regan in the back seat. I drove into the downpour. Within a minute, she was miraculously still. Magically silent.
So I've repeated the trick, including last Monday evening, which I described at the start of this confession. I forgot to mention that during that Regan-shushing drive and a few before it, I listened to the audio version of the recent best seller 'This Dog Will Change Your Life,' by Elias Weiss Friedman. Seemed fitting.
I'm not sure if my automotive accommodation of Regan makes me a chump or a champ, but I lack other ideas, and I can't see exiling her to some distant room in the house and thus exacerbating her grief just so I'm spared it. I've found a way, albeit somewhat kooky and cumbersome, to relieve a beloved's distress. Shouldn't I use it?
I deny Regan and am stern with her in plenty of other circumstances. She doesn't need that when the heavens rage.
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