SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A25
SUNDAY Opinion
E
t tu, Mulvaney?
Three weeks ago, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled
the impeachment inquiry with a
Latin phrase spoken by Julius Caesar
when he crossed the Rubicon. “A lea i acta
est,” she said. The die is cast.
Since then, President Trump has
absolved himself by repeating — ad
infinitum — some Latin of his own:
“There was no quid pro quo.” No this for
that.
Enter Mick Mulvaney, deus ex machi-
na, to destroy Trump’s defense. The
president’s (still) acting chief of staff
briefed reporters Thursday and, in fla-
grante delicto, admitted Trump commit-
ted the sine qua non of a quid pro quo.
Mulvaney said there was “no ques-
tion” that one of the reasons Trump
withheld military aid to Ukraine was to
force Ukraine to investigate “corrup-
tion” related to the Democratic Party.
“A nd that is absolutely appropriate,”
Mulvaney argued. “We do that all the
time with foreign policy.”
Thus did the White House admit —
ipso facto — to the exact crime Trump is
accused of in the impeachment inquiry.
“No quid pro quo” became “quid pro quo
— so?” (a.k.a. quid apropos).
Mulvaney’s modus operandi is clear
enough: The White House must be in
extremis realizing that depositions to
Congress by administration officials are
proving a de facto quid pro quo. Trump
needs a new defense.
To be fair, Mulvaney didn’t admit a
quid pro Joe (trading military aid for
dirt on the Democratic front-runner)
but a quid pro down-low (trading mili-
tary aid for dirt supporting a conspiracy
theory about Democrats). Still, the tran-
script of Trump’s c all with the Ukrainian
president makes clear it was a quid pro
combo.
In a sense, Mulvaney is correct when
he says “we d o that all t he time.” Trump’s
tenure has been one big quid pro. He
decreed Thursday t hat next year’s G roup
of Seven gathering of world leaders
must be at the Doral resort he owns in a
clear quid pro cash flow for the Trump
Organization. His funneling of govern-
ment business to Mar-a-Lago has been a
quid pro chateau. Having the U. S. mili-
tary patronize his Scotland property is a
quid pro Glasgow, and Vice President
Pence’s hawking of Trump’s Ireland
property is a blatant quid pro brogue.
Trump’s Washington hotel rakes in lob-
byists’ and foreign governments’ cash in
a quid pro dough, and government
funds paid to his New York and New
Jersey properties complete the quid pro
portfolio.
This benefits not only Trump but his
sons, in what might be called a quid pro
slow (or a quid pro I dunno). Donald
Trump Jr.’s protests about Biden family
nepotism this week, while ignoring his
own, can only be termed a quid pro bozo.
Trump’s national security adviser, Rob-
ert O’Brien, last week, floated a quid pro
whistleblow: He’s clearing out career
professionals (prospective whistleblow-
ers) by slashing the NSC staff. The
administration also tried to block coop-
eration with the inquiry, in a quid pro
Pompeo. And then there’s Trump’s deci-
sion to let Rudy Giuliani take over
U. S. foreign policy: a quid pro schmoe.
Mulvaney, in his appearance Thurs-
day, attempted a quid pro John Doe,
pretending that he didn’t know the
names of the officials testifying to
Congress. The attorney general, William
Barr, has trashed his principles to give
Trump a quid pro ego.
Trump has been doing this sort of
thing since a quid pro big toe kept him
out of Vietnam. He abandoned gun-
safety p lans after meeting with t he NRA,
a quid pro ammo. His voter-suppression
efforts are a quid p ro Jim Crow. In a quid
pro Kudlow, he convinced free-market
conservatives to embrace a trade war.
His tax cut, a quid pro CEO, ballooned
the debt in a quid pro borrow. Evangeli-
cal Christians tolerate his immorality in
exchange for his judicial nominees, a
quid pro Roe. He paid hush money to
Stormy Daniels, a quid pro lie low. Much
of his presidency has been a quid pro
Moscow.
He trades in false claims (quid pro
Pinocchio) and plugs for friendly Fox
News h osts (quid pro puppet s how). And
his requiring of constant flattery from
underlings (quid pro braggadocio) has
turned the West Wing into a quid pro
freak show.
Because impeachment has made us
all Latin speakers, I asked my longtime
classics c onsultant, Vanessa, to t ranslate
into genuine Latin some of Trump’s
trade-offs:
Quid pro impendio (this for pay-
ment).
Quid pro deverticulo (this for a re-
sort).
Quid pro luto (this for dirt).
Quid pro vitio (this for a crime).
Quid pro reo (this for a sinner).
Quid pro imperio (this for power).
Giving G iuliani r esponsibility for any-
thing? A blatant quid pro asino (this for
a fool). But that’s pro forma for a
president who sold his soul (quid pro
animo) and made his office a quid pro
mimo: this for a farce.
Twitter: @MilbankDANA MILBANKThe quid pro
quo show,
now in vivo
BY NANCY PELOSIT
his week, the people of Balti-
more, the Congress and the
United States lost a voice of
unsurpassed moral clarity and
truth: our beloved Chairman Elijah
E. Cummings.
In the House, Elijah was our North
Star. He was a leader of towering charac-
ter and integrity, who pushed the Con-
gress and country always to rise to a
higher purpose, reminding us why we are
here. As he said whenever he saw that we
were not living up to our Founders’ vision
for America and meeting the needs of our
children for the future: “We are better
than this.”
Elijah’s story was the story of the
United States: A son of sharecroppers
who became Baptist preachers, he dedi-
cated his life to advancing justice, liberty,
fairness and human dignity. He believed
in the promise of America because he had
lived it. As c hairman of the Committee on
Oversight and Reform, he used his gavel
to restore integrity, accountability and
honesty to Washington so that govern-
ment would be a force for good for
working people, ensuring that all could
experience the American Dream as he
did.
Firm in his principles, Elijah was also a
peacemaker and a bridge-builder: pas-
sionate about what he believed in, dispas-
sionate in his judgments about how to
proceed. His clarion voice would cut
through conflict, calming the waters and
reaching out across the aisle, no matter
how rough-and-tumble the debate.
He was a generous leader. He alwaysshared credit and took the time to mentor
younger members, both on his commit-
tee and throughout our caucus. This year,
during the first weeks of the new Con-
gress, when members were being added
to his highly coveted committee, he said
to me, “Send me as many freshmen as you
can.” He wanted to help them succeed —
and he wanted to learn from them, too.
He was a fighter for U.S. families in
many respects, including lowering
health-care costs. That was why mem-
bers decided on the day of his passing to
name our prescription drug price legisla-tion H.R. 3, the Elijah E. Cummings
Lower Drug Costs Now Act. He was
always touched by the stories he heard in
his community about the toll that high
health-care costs took on families’ eco-
nomic security and well-being. He also
saw this challenge through the prism of
his own personal health challenges. Eli-
jah recognized that he had a responsibili-
ty to make a difference for others. He
understood that to whom much is given,
much is expected.
We all saw the great pride he took in
representing the Baltimore area. He wastruly of Baltimore. As a senior member of
the Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee, he was always fighting for his
district and the state of Maryland, and
was a powerful voice for building the
infrastructure of the United States to
create good-paying jobs. As a member of
the U.S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors,
he took great pride in Maryland’s role in
our national security.
Elijah knew that life was fleeting and
precious; it was imperative for him to
make the most of his time on Earth.
Earlier this year, he proclaimed, “When
we’re dancing with the angels, the ques-
tion will be asked: In 2019, what did we
do to make sure we kept our democracy
intact?”
Elijah’s leadership truly strengthened
America, and his life and legacy will
continue to inspire us all to go forth in a
way that is worthy of the oath of office
that we take to the Constitution, worthy
of the vision of our Founders and worthy
of the aspirations of our children. For, as
he often said, “Children are the living
messengers we send to the future we will
never see.”
In Congress, we will miss his wisdom,
his warm friendship and his great hu-
manity. In Baltimore, we will miss our
champion. May it be a comfort to his wife,
Maya, his three children and his entire
family that so many mourn their loss and
are praying for them at this sad time.
God truly blessed the United States
with the life and leadership of Elijah
Cummings.The writer, a Democrat from California, is
speaker of the House of Representatives.Congress’s voice of moral clarity and truth
T
he American fascination with
celebrity is strong. So strong
that, as my Spanish wife has
noted, even our serial killers get
flattering biopics. (“Ted Bundy — a
monster, yes, but what a brilliant, hand-
some guy!”)
The president of the United States
rose to public consciousness not
through a single minute of public serv-
ice but rather via reality television. In a
world dominated by social media, peo-
ple increasingly don’t even have to do
anything to be sought-after public fig-
ures — they can be famous simply for
being famous, as the saying goes. In
1968, when Andy Warhol predicted a
future in which everyone would be
world-famous for 15 minutes, it sound-
ed ridiculous; today it sounds increas-
ingly plausible.
And fame is all we really want, isn’t i t?
All the twisted, celebrity-obsessed as-
pects of American culture and politics
are just a mirror of our own unfulfilled
desires to be loved and admired by
millions, right? Wrong. The truth is
that, despite our prurient interest in
celebrities, the overwhelming majority
of people do not want to be famous, and
the minority of people who truly desire
fame are abnormal.
Consider the evidence. The think
tank Populace has published an impor-
tant new study that uses data collected
by Gallup about what Americans believe
constitutes “success.” The authors
found that most of us believe that other
people see fame as central to personal
success. Among a nationally representa-
tive sample of 5,242 Americans, 92 per-
cent said fame is part of how they thinkother people define success: “A person is
successful if they are rich, have a high-
profile career, or are well-known.”
But here’s the report’s really interest-
ing finding: Only 3 percent said that
fame is how they themselves define
their own personal success. Instead,
97 percent picked this definition: “A
person is successful if they have fol-
lowed their own interests and talents to
become the best they can be at what
they care about most.”
This is not to say people don’t seek
recognition for their accomplishments.
“We are not only gregarious animals,
liking to be in sight of our fellows,”
wrote the great American philosopher
and psychologist William James in
1890, “but we have an innate propensity
to get ourselves noticed, and noticed
favorably, by our kind.” University of
Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Selig-
man has shown that accomplishment is
one of the sources of true human
happiness, and we naturally seek recog-
nition for it.
However, as most of us come to
realize as we grow up, recognition by
peers for a job well done transforms into
a pathology — and a source of unhappi-
ness — when it becomes a need to be
admired by thousands or millions of
strangers. Most of us know intuitively
what a 1996 study in the journal Person-
ality and Social Psychology Bulletin
showed: that “intrinsic goals” such as
self-acceptance and friendship bring
happiness. Meanwhile, “extrinsic goals,”
such as fame, which r ely on the approval
of others, lead to “lower vitality and
self-actualization and more physical
symptoms.”Why? To begin with, fame is Sisy-
phean. The goal can’t be satisfied; no
one is ever “famous enough.” Famous
people sometimes confess that they feel
like losers when they see someone else
who is yet more famous. “Wealth is like
sea-water; the more we drink, the thirst-
ier we become; and the same is true of
fame” — that’s philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer, writing in 1851, roughly
a century and a half before Twitter
launched.
Meanwhile, staying in the public eye
is grinding work. A musician of some
renown once told me that getting and
staying famous is a miserable combina-
tion of drudgery and terror. Emily
Dickinson captured the drudgery in her
poem “I'm Nobody! Who are you?”:
“How dreary to be somebody! / How
public, like a frog / To t ell your name the
livelong day / To an admiring bog!”
Furthermore, the attention of strang-
ers is rarely purely positive. Indeed,
“fame” i tself derives from the name of
the Roman goddess Fama (Pheme for
the Greeks), who brought not just re-
nown but also scandalous rumors. Ce-
lebrities sometimes attest that the pub-
lic relishes their failures as much as
their successes. After all, admiration
and envy — a deadly sin that isn’t even
fun — are perilously close emotions.
There are many good and healthy
famous people, of course. But the Popu-
lace survey showed that fame per se is
not what normal, well-adjusted adults
seek. It’s f air to speculate that those who
do chase fame for its own sake imma-
turely define success as they think
others see it, or have something psycho-
logically amiss.That first category contains a lot of
children, who are especially prone to
peer effects and social pressure. Indeed,
one study from 2006 found that fame
for its own sake was the most popular
future goal for children under age 10.
Most people grow out of this childish-
ness and learn to pursue their own
happiness, although I worry that the
modern world is making it harder to
detect fame’s empty promises.
Who is in the second, psychological-
ly amiss category — those who evident-
ly make up the 3 percent who equate
success and fame in their own lives?
Psychologists who have studied the
subject have found a particular desire
for fame among narcissists, people who
are unusually socially insecure
and those especially afraid of death.
The only positive cases of fame-seeking
behavior involve those who say they
would use it to widely do good works.
(Then again, I’ve met a lot of narcissists
who say all they want is to serve the
world.) In general, these are not the
people we want ourselves or our chil-
dren to be, nor those whom we want as
leaders.
In sum, America could use a better
conversation about fame. People need
to know that working to attain fame for
its own sake is not normal at all; that
fame-seekers should have our concern,
not our adoration. We should teach
children that happiness is possible de-
spite fame but never because of it; and
that fame should be only a rare byprod-
uct of good work. Most important, we
should avoid leaders in politics and
culture who have this pathological defi-
nition of personal success.ARTHUR C. BROOKSAmericans embrace the wisdom of being ‘nobody’
TOMASZ WALENTA FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTSALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
The desk used by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings in the chambers for the House
Oversight and Reform Committee on Oct. 17.