Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Matt Gaetz, meet Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was furious with General George Meade because he had not pursued and destroyed Robert E. Lee’s defeated army after the Battle of Gettysburg.
“He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would… have ended the war,” the president wrote to the commander of the Army of the Potomac.
But he did not sign or send the letter. He put it in his desk drawer instead. Cooling off, he realized that Meade’s troops had been too spent for another immediate battle.
The example of the 16th president is obviously lost on the 45th. President Trump’s barrage of impromptu and snarky Twitter posts distorts the nation’s political forum, demeans its highest office and discourages others from trying to compromise with him.
It’s lost also on Matt Gaetz.
He’s the second-term Florida Congressman from Fort Walton Beach who bought himself a heap of trouble last Tuesday with a tweet that appeared to threaten former Trump attorney Michael Cohen before his testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Gaetz’s subsequent apologies to Cohen and Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t close the book. Neither does his having taken down the tweet. Bells can’t be unrung.
Gaetz tried initially to defend his conduct as “witness testing” rather than witness tampering, which would be a crime. He reconsidered that ludicrous excuse after a stern warning from Pelosi against any comments “on social media or in the press” that might intimidate House witnesses.
Pelosi said the Committee on Ethics should “vigorously monitor these types of statements.” In Gaetz’s case, it is probably already doing so. It should be asking where Gaetz came up with his lurid insinuations about Cohen’s conduct. If they came from Trump or anyone involved with him, they would be of legitimate interest to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Other House members called promptly on the committee to investigate Gaetz’s crude and unprecedented attack on Cohen. Criminal charges remain a possibility, though probably not a strong one.
The Florida Bar has acknowledged opening an investigation into whether Gaetz, a lawyer, violated the Code of Professional Responsibility. That may be a long shot too. The ethics code’s provision against intimidating witnesses specifies conduct “in connection with the practice of law,” and Gaetz was practicing politics, not law, when he defamed Cohen. However, there is also a catch-all rule against any act “contrary to honesty and justice” and another that would expose Gaetz to disbarment should he be convicted of a crime.
With few exceptions, Congressional Republicans seem to believe they are Praetorian guards to Trump’s Caesar, rather than tribunes of the people and protectors of their Constitution. But even by that sub-minimum standard, Gaetz’s conduct was so far out of bounds that it deserves official censure by the House, much as the Senate condemned Joseph McCarthy for his reckless smears in 1954.
Since Gaetz disgraced his state as well as himself and his office, the other members of the Florida delegation should add their names to the petition for an ethics investigation and to a resolution of censure.
Gaez’s tweet was as slanderous as anything McCarthy ever cooked up.
“Hey Michael Cohen,” the tweet said, “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot.”If that wasn’t a threat, hot dogs aren’t sausages.
Notably, no Republicans on the committee (Gaetz isn’t a member) even hinted at any sexual misconduct on Cohen’s part during their day-long attempts to disparage his testimony. One reason, perhaps, is that they had no evidence of any. Another would be that even they saw how incongruous it would be to defend Trump by accusing anyone else of adultery.
There’s a larger lesson to be learned than simply to not threaten congressional witnesses, and Gaetz is far from the only person who should learn it.
Abraham Lincoln taught it by his example. As the nation was coming apart, he denounced no one. He appealed, rather, “to the better angels of our nature.” Four years later, in his second inaugural message, he said, “let us judge not, that we be not judged.” He spoke of “malice toward none, with charity for all” and to doing “all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Granted, Lincoln didn’t have Twitter or any other modern means to instantly gratify anger at light speed. But he knew to keep his temper in check by thinking it over before hitting the 19th Century equivalent of “send.”
Gaetz and Trump would be better politicians by following Lincoln’s example. So would a lot of other people. And the nation would be better off.
Since Matt Gaetz disgraced his state as well as himself and his office, the other members of the Florida delegation should add their names to the petition for an ethics investigation and to a resolution of censure.