The Washington Post - 20.10.2019

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A27

“I

am a classically trained en-

gineer,” says Rep. Will

Hurd, a Te xas Republican,

“and I firmly believe in re-

gression to the mean.” Applying a

concept from statistics to the ran-

domness of today’s politics is prob-

lematic. In any case, Hurd, 42, is not

waiting for the regression of our

politics from the extreme ends of the

ideological spectrum to something

like temperate normality. He is leav-

ing Congress at the end of this, his

third term. And he sees portents that

his blinkered party w ould be prudent

to notice.

Hurd is one of six Te xas Republi-

can congressman who have decided

not to seek reelection next year. Until

this year, none of them had, since

2011, experienced the purgatory of

being in the House minority. In the

2018 “Texodus,” five Te xas Republi-

can representatives retired (a sixth

resigned) and two were defeated. Of

the 241 Republicans in the House

when President Trump was inaugu-

rated, almost 40 percent are gone or

going. See a trend?

Hurd, who is not forswearing pub-

lic life, insists, “I’m just getting start-

ed.” Might he come back to electoral

politics? “For sure.” His “passion” is

“the nexus between technology and

national security.” He is, however,

saying goodbye to the rigors of the

“DC to DQ” tours that have regularly

taken him to the far reaches of his

district. For you effete coastal resi-

dents who are unfamiliar with the

delights of flyover country, “DQ”

means Dairy Queen. Hurd meets

gatherings of constituents at DQs

because “every town has one, and

everyone knows where they are.”

Last year, he was one of just three

Republicans to win a district carried

by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presi-

dential election. (She won his by

three points.) His House race was the

nation’s fourth-most-competitive:

He won by 926 votes. But, then, his

largest victory, in 2016, was by just

3,051 votes. His district, which in-

cludes 23 percent of Te xas’s land and

extends from San Antonio’s fringe to

New Mexico’s border, is the state’s

largest, encompassing all or parts of

29 counties and 820 miles of the

U.S.-Mexico border. It is 58,000

square miles — almost as big as

Georgia and larger than Illinois and

25 other states. It is 69 percent His-

panic and just 4 percent African

American.

Hurd, an articulate, assertive 6-

foot-4 former CIA operative and the

only African American Republican

in the House, thinks voting trends

“are moving so fast” t hat 2020 “has

nothing to do with 2016.” Just as

“U.S. economic and military domi-

nance are no longer guaranteed,”

neither is Republican dominance in

Te xas, a state that is hardly immune

to national trends.

In the 2016 House of Representa-

tives elections, no Republican in-

cumbent from Te xas lost, and only

one was elected with less than

55 percent of the vote. In 2018, two

lost and 10 received less than 55 per-

cent. In 2 016, four incumbent Repub-

licans in Te xas’s House were defeat-

ed, and only four won with majorities

under 55 percent. In 2 018, there were

eight losses, and 16 won with less

than 55 percent. John Cornyn, who

recently stepped down as the second-

highest-ranking Republican leader

(majority whip) in the U.S. Senate,

has won three terms with majorities

of 55.3 percent, 54.8 percent and

61.6 percent but seems headed for a

more competitive race next year. No

wonder Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois,

chairwoman of the Democratic Con-

gressional Campaign Committee,

says Te xas is “ground zero” for Demo-

crats’ attempts to strengthen their

hold on the House.

Nationally, Republicans are de-

creasingly strong where two genera-

tions ago they were especially robust

— in suburbs. Te xas ranks high

among the states in terms of the

percentage of the population that is

suburban. And statewide, whites are

a minority.

In 2008, with the Great Recession

underway, John McCain carried Te x-

as by 12 points. In 2 012, Mitt R omney

carried it by 16. In 2016, Trump

(whom Hurd did not endorse) won

by nine points. In Texas’s most im-

portant 2018 contest for a federal

office, incumbent Republican

Sen. Te d Cruz won by just three. See a

trend?

If the Democratic Party can collect

Te xas’s electoral votes — 3 8 today,

perhaps 41 after the 2020 Census —

as well as California’s 55, it will reap

35.5 percent of a winning 270 from

just two states. Then the GOP will

have almost no plausible path to 270,

and Democrats who are currently

hot to abolish the electoral college

will suddenly say: Oh, never mind.

And Hurd will repeat what he says

today: Te xas is “already purple.” Re-

publicans “have to get out of our own

way” because “if the Republican Par-

ty i n Te xas does not start looking like

Te xas, there will not be a Republican

Party in Te xas.”

[email protected]

GEORGE F. WILL

‘Texodus’

bodes badly

for the GOP

S

hakespeare long ago wrote

that “truth will out,” meaning

that what’s true — by virtue of

its basis in fact and logic —

eventually will conquer the lie.

Sometimes, truth is so eager to be

heard that it slips past the speaker’s

tongue without his conscious coop-

eration.

Enter acting White House chief of

staff Mick Mulvaney. On Thursday,

Mulvaney’s cat escaped the bag he

had been carrying for President

Trump during his 10-month-long

“acting” t enure.

Yes, yes, yes, we withheld funds to

Ukraine in order to obtain help

investigating the 2016 hacking of a

Democratic National Committee

server! You could almost hear the

relief of having gotten it out — the

truth, that is — so that he could get

some REM sleep for a change.

Keeping the lie that there was no

quid pro quo, as the official White

House narrative went on and on,

would have been a burden to the

good, which Mulvaney is. If he were

otherwise, surely he’d be the non-

acting chief of staff by now. It’s the

liars and the not-so-good who seem

to survive in the Trump administra-

tion.

Mulvaney’s days, on the other

hand, are likely numbered. Truth

may be the heart’s best friend, but it

is not helpful in the sort of presiden-

tial politics being played out on

Pennsylvania Avenue. This might

explain Mulvaney’s near-immediate

walk-back of his comments to the

media. He i ssued a statement assert-

ing “there was absolutely no quid

pro quo” (because Ukraine didn’t

produce anything?) and that the

pause on funding was related only to

“corruption” in Ukraine and had

nothing to do with the fantastical

server heist.

Remember that the Mueller re-

port concluded that Russian opera-

tives did, in fact, hack a DNC server

to gain information that might be

helpful to Trump’s e lection. Trump is

still so undone by this now-obvious

truth that he seems determined to

disprove it and has become obsessed

with the conspiracy that the server

somehow ended up in Ukraine and

contains evidence that there was no

hacking by the Russians. Even

though the special counsel also con-

cluded that there was no coordina-

tion between the Trump campaign

and Russian operatives, the presi-

dent seemingly has a desperate need

to prove that he won by his own

genius.

“I want to see the server,” he told

reporters in the White House last

Wednesday. “I think it’s very impor-

tant for this country to see the serv-

er.” Really? I have bad news for the

president: The idea even that a sin-

gle server exists — and can be hidden

somewhere — is ludicrous. Nowa-

days, a “server” i s actually dozens of

interconnected systems.

In other words, Trump has risked

everything, inviting impeachment,

to prove that he won fair and square.

His Ukraine parry was a matter not

of national security but of ego. His

need for reassurance and public val-

idation is so consuming that he’s

apparently blind to consequences,

never more obvious than his recent

dealings with Turkish President Re-

cep Ta yyip Erdogan, which led to

Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria.

In that case, however, people — not

reputations — died. What part

Trump’s ego played in that transac-

tion hasn’t been discovered yet, but

Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) theory

that Erdogan issued an ultimatum

and Trump caved may be getting

warm.

Before we leave the subject of the

2016 election, let’s be very clear:

Trump didn’t win so much as the

Democrats lost. And, if they’re not

very careful starting immediately —

that is, if they don’t stop sounding

like aliens whose implanted data

receivers haven’t yet mastered the

code for “Mainstream America” —

they could lose again.

Mulvaney’s stab at survival,

meanwhile, might have been a smart

move. A wise friend once told me:

“A lways tell the truth as soon as

possible.” You may not win friends;

you may sacrifice something want-

ed. But over time, lies will consume

the liar and maybe make him crazy,

and paranoia usually follows. Mul-

vaney might lose his job over the

truth; the bus under which so many

have been cast sits idling outside the

West Wing, and it calls for thee.

Granted, he might have skipped

his other lines about “Get over it”

and “We do that all the time,” but he

must feel that a weight has been

lifted. Mulvaney, at least, will enjoy

an afterlife beyond the White House.

As for Trump, his paranoia expands

with his prevarications. According

to The Post’s Fact Checker, as of

Oct. 9, the president had made

13,435 false or misleading claims

since taking office.

If truth ever does slip off his

tongue, Congress will have to de-

clare a national holiday.

[email protected]

KATHLEEN PARKER

Sometimes,

the truth

just slips out

BY DONALD GRAHAM

I

still remember watching my first

Washington baseball game. I was

3 years old and was at Griffith Sta-

dium with my dad. The year was

1948; the team was called the Senators.

They played in the American League.

They w ere, I later l earned, really lousy.

But a s a tiny baseball fan, I loved them.

I followed their wins and losses; I believe

I learned to read on Shirley Povich’s col-

umn on The Post’s sports page. I studied

batting averages; my friends and I made

hypothetical trades to improve the team.

In real life, nothing improved them

much. By the late ’50s, their owner was

(Povich told m e later), a vile racist, Calvin

Griffith. When the team acquired a few

good players, he m oved his club to Minne-

sota, which paid him for the pleasure of

his company.

Washington, meanwhile, was given a

historically awful expansion team. No

one m uch w ent to see these new Senators,

but my friends and I did. You could sit in

the s tands a t RFK Stadium with a handful

of others and enjoy a game. If you called

out your favorite player’s name, he might

turn and look at y ou.

We had a great time and kept going

back. We even went to doubleheaders.

(They lasted about as long as one game

does now.) The league moved our team

again i n 1971; the o wner was B ob Short, a

promoter with no money to speak of.

Offered some dough to move to Te xas, he

didn’t hesitate. I was in the stands for the

last game.

That was the end of baseball in Wash-

ington until 2005. And then, a new experi-

ence. Te d Lerner, an owner with even more

experience as a fan than I have (Ted cel-

ebrated his 94th birthday on the day the

Nationals won their first National League

Championship Series), built a good team.

He hired a baseball man, Mike Rizzo, and

let him put together the franchise.

Now, for the first time i n my l ife, Wash-

ington plays in the World Series. I can’t

believe it. We’ll be huge underdogs, as a

Washington b aseball team ought to be.

The 2019 players — Anthony Rendon,

Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Juan

Soto, Ryan Zimmerman, Howie Kendrick,

Trea Turner, all of them — have made

summer a joy for D.C. baseball fans.

But so did the players on the old Sena-

tors and the Nationals teams that didn’t

go as far. This week, I feel lucky to be a

baseball fan. B ut then, I always have.

I have one thing to say to this year’s

team, a nd to the old-days and more recent

players I’ve watched: the good ones,

Frank Howard, Roy Sievers, Camilo Pas-

cual, Chuck Hinton, Jayson Werth and

the rest of you. And the really dreadful

ones, personified by Herb Plews, who

once made three errors in one inning.

Even to you, Bryce Harper:

Thank you.

We’ve had a lot of fun watching you at

work. And we’ll try to have fun again next

week, win or lose.

But after a lifetime of watching losers,

here’s hoping the baseball gods choose to

give Washington a World Series champi-

onship. This group of players seems to

deserve it.

And so do we.

Donald Graham, publisher of The Post from

1979 to 2000, is chairman of Graham

Holdings.

A win for the team, and the fans

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Washington Nationals fans during Game Four between the Nationals and the St. Louis Cardinals on Oct. 15.

BY MITCH MCCONNELL

W

ithdrawing U.S. forces from Syria

is a grave strategic m istake. I t will

leave the American people and

homeland less safe, embolden

our enemies, and weaken important alli-

ances. S adly, the recently announced pullout

risks repeating the Obama administration’s

reckless withdrawal from Iraq, which facili-

tated the rise of the Islamic State in the first

place.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I have

worked with three presidential administra-

tions to fight radical Islamist terrorism. I

have distilled three principal lessons about

combating this complex threat.

Lesson No. 1 is that the threat is real and

cannot be wished away. These fanatics

threaten American interests and American

lives. If permitted to regroup and establish

havens, they w ill bring terror to our shores.

Second, there is no substitute for Ameri-

can leadership. No other nation can match

our capability to spearhead multinational

campaigns that can defeat terrorists and

help stabilize the region. Libya and Syria

both testify to the bloody results of the

Obama administration’s “leading from be-

hind.”

This truth extends well beyond counter-

terrorism. If we Americans care at all about

the post-World War II international system

that has sustained an unprecedented era of

peace, p rosperity and technological develop-

ment, we must recognize that we are its

indispensable nation. We built this system,

we sustained it, and we have benefited from

it most of all.

When the United States threw off the

comforting blanket of isolationism in the

194 0s and took the mantle of global leader-

ship, we made t he whole w orld better, but w e

specifically made it much b etter f or the Unit-

ed States. If we abandon that mantle today,

we can be sure that a new world o rder will be

made — and not on terms favorable t o us.

The third lesson is that we are not in this

fight alone. In recent years, the campaigns

against the Islamic State and the Taliban, in

Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan, have been

waged primarily by local forces. The United

States has mainly contributed limited, spe-

cialized capabilities that enable our local

partners to succeed. Ironically, Syria had

been a model for this increasingly successful

approach.

In January, following indications that the

president was considering withdrawing U. S.

forces from Syria and Afghanistan, I thought

the S enate should reaffirm these crucial p rin-

ciples. Senators would have the opportunity

to debate our interests and strategy in the

Middle E ast.

The Senate stepped up. A bipartisan su-

permajority of 70 senators supported an

amendment I wrote to emphasize these les-

sons. It s tated o ur opposition to prematurely

exiting Syria or Afghanistan, reemphasized

the n eed for sustained U.S. leadership to fight

terrorists, and urged that we continue work-

ing alongside allies and local forces. While I

was disheartened that nearly all the Senate

Democrats running for president and S enate

Minority L eader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)

opposed the amendment, the consensus po-

sition of nearly all Republicans a nd a number

of Democrats was e ncouraging.

Unfortunately, t he a dministration’s r ecent

steps in Syria do not reflect these crucial

lessons.

The combination o f a U. S. pullback and the

escalating Turkish-Kurdish hostilities is cre-

ating a strategic nightmare for our country.

Even if the five-day cease-fire announced

Thursday h olds, events of the p ast week have

set back the United States’ c ampaign against

the Islamic State and other terrorists. Unless

halted, our retreat will invite the brutal

Assad regime in Syria and its Iranian backers

to expand their influence. And we are ignor-

ing Russia’s efforts to leverage i ts increasing-

ly dominant position in Syria to amass power

and influence throughout the Middle East

and b eyond.

Predictably, our adversaries seem to be

relishing these developments. The resulting

geopolitical chain reaction appears to have

been perfectly distilled by an online video

which, according to reports, shows a smiling

Russian “journalist” strolling around a just-

abandoned U.S. military base in northern

Syria. A strategic c alamity n eatly c aptured i n

one Facebook post.

As we seek to pick up the pieces, we must

remain guided by our national interests and

not emotions. While Turkish President Re-

cep Tayyip Erdogan’s offensive into north-

eastern Syria is misguided, i s it really the c ase

that the United States would prefer that

Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces control

the region rather than Turkey, our NATO

ally?

We need to use both sticks and carrots to

bring Turkey b ack i n line while respecting its

own legitimate security concerns. In addi-

tion to limiting Turkey’s incursion and en-

couraging an enduring cease-fire, we should

create conditions for the reintroduction of

U.S. troops and move Turkey away from

Russia a nd back into t he NATO fold.

To keep pressure on Islamic State terror-

ists, deter Iranian aggression and buy our

local partners more leverage to negotiate

with Bashar al-Assad to end the underlying

conflict, we should retain a limited military

presence in Syria a nd maintain our presence

in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. We m ust

also work closely with allies threatened by

this chaos, such as Israel and Jordan, and

redouble i nternational efforts to pressure the

Assad regime. And Congress must finally

pass the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act

to hold the regime accountable for its atroci-

ties.

Finally, whatever happens in Syria, this

situation must chasten the United States

against withdrawing from Afghanistan be-

fore the job is done. We must recommit t o our

Afghan partners as they do the heavy lifting

to defend their country and their freedoms

from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

As n eo-isolationism rears its head on both

the left and the right, we can expect to hear

more talk of “endless wars.” But rhetoric

cannot change the fact that wars do not just

end; wars are won or lost.

The United States has sacrificed much in

years-long campaigns t o defeat a l-Qaeda and

the Islamic State and stabilize the conflicts

that foster e xtremism. But while the p olitical

will to continue this hard work may wax and

wane, the threats to our nation aren’t going

anywhere.

We saw humanitarian disaster and a ter-

rorist free-for-all after we abandoned Af-

ghanistan in the 1990s, laying the ground-

work for 9/11. We saw the Islamic State

flourish in Iraq after President Barack

Obama’s retreat. We will see these things

anew in Syria and A fghanistan if we abandon

our partners and r etreat f rom these conflicts

before they are won.

America’s wars will be “endless” only if

America refuses to win t hem.

The writer, a Republican from Kentucky, is majority

leader of the U.S. Senate.

A grave mistake on Syria

Rhetoric cannot change

the fact that wars

do not just end;

wars are won or lost.