Montana Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy poses for photos with supporters outside of a rally in Bozeman on Aug. 9, 2024. (Photo by Blair Miller, Daily Montanan)
Ah, U.S. Senators grow up so fast.
One day they’re ducking the media in rural places like Big Timber, the next month, they’re in D.C., avoiding any questions from Montana and national media.
Such is the kind of cat-and-mouse game that has become so cherished in Montana that voters booted a senator who took phone calls, answered questions and spoke openly about federal issues. They “retired” the now lame-duck farmer and replaced him with an expensive looking version of a modern-day Marlboro man, a wannabe rancher who looks good on a horse, but who grew up in the burbs of a large city several states away. I guess videos of sweat and grease of Jon Tester on a Big Sandy farm weren’t quite the images that Montana wanted to represent them in this era of “Yellowstone” on demand.
Meanwhile, our soon-to-be senior senator is doing something of utmost importance: Keeping a racist-tinged NFL logo that caricatures Native Americans on an NFL team that had the good sense to abandon the “Redskins” moniker nearly five years ago.
Whew, Montana. Glad we’re making authentic authentic again.
But our soon-to-be-sworn-in senator, Tim Sheehy, the dutiful Republican puppet who exudes a very specific frat-boy feel, has full-throatedly supported Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, an unsurprising move given that Gabbard campaigned for Sheehy. Quid, meet pro quo.
For a Republican administration that pays a lot of lip service about being tough, Sheehy’s press release is nothing but puff as he announces his support, despite questions of Gabbard’s troubling connections to the Kremlin. Victoria Eavis of the Lee Montana State Bureau reports Sheehy’s support of Gabbard, and then notes Sheehy’s lack of response to any follow-up questions, a technique he perfected on the campaign trail.
Gabbard is apparently qualified because she’s good looking, according to Sheehy. And if there’s one thing I know about national intelligence, it’s that it is no match for physical beauty, according to my exhaustive intake of James Bond movies.
Eavis also reported that Sheehy made some impenetrable comments about Democrats having no credibility on issues of national security because of some “cross-dressing kleptomaniac,” leaving most reporters questioning: What in the actual hell is he talking about? Eavis wasn’t able to decipher any meaning, and told readers. Count me in that camp.
We’ll probably never know because Sheehy doesn’t take follow-up questions or requests for an interview.
Trump supporters in Congress and throughout the country say proudly that Trump was re-elected to shake up Washington. But the only difference between “shake-up” and chaos is wisdom and discretion, things which we routinely expect from adults but nevertheless evade Trump.
For at least four to six years, I suspect that all media, state and national, will be in the same Catch-22 position: We will have a duty to report what our elected leaders are doing and where they stand, but be forced to take sound bites and press releases that are more fluff than substance, running the risk of amplifying their talking points without any semblance of accountability. Damned if we ignore them and thereby perpetuate a vacuum of ignorance; damned if we platform the half-truths.
Sadly, Gabbard is just one of so many uniquely and thoroughly unqualified nominees who may soon inhabit the highest positions of our federal government. Trump, in the ultimate example of loyalty tests, will exact a steep price for people like Daines and Sheehy, who will be called upon to be the only and final safety net to check Trump’s executive impulses. They will be forced to debase themselves in order to curry favor in the name of some imagined mandate, and history may regard them as fools and sycophants for doing so because they have mistaken themselves as part of the same team, rather than a co-equal check on a separate branch of government, as our founders intended in the same document, the Constitution, that they supposedly revere.
Even during opportunities on friendly networks such as Fox News, Sheehy’s brief appearances have been called “confusing” by their own hosts. And when asked if he’d apologize for comments about drunken Native Americans, Sheehy doubled down and falsely said the recordings of him had been doctored, proving that even success on the battlefield or as a pilot is not necessarily a stepping stone for the kind of skillset needed in the Senate.
That makes sense because we weren’t electing pilots or soldiers.
Couple our patriotism with our state’s starry-eyed awe for other politicians whose only qualifying characteristics seem to be business acumen, and the result is a group of sacrosanct public servants who can’t be bothered or insulted with questions. Many have tried to convince us that success in government is just as simple as running the government like a business. Though, the longer I spend covering government, which spans nearly three decades, the less I’m convinced that the two have much of a correlation.
As much as I would love to blame Sheehy for the mealy-mouthed answers that demonstrate his only real notably quality — his ability to be a loyal lickspittle for the Trump agenda — we have essentially elected an entire class of politicians who have faced nothing but reward for their unwillingness to answer questions.
Even Sheehy’s own staff doesn’t seem to quibble with the fact that the Senator-elect has avoided anything that resembles a serious, substantive interview.
Credit Sheehy’s mentor, Daines, for recognizing that Montana’s sheep-like loyalty to the Republican Party will tolerate electing leaders who refuse to answer questions. In all likelihood, Sheehy may not even be the most problematic Treasure State politician to exploit our own blind fealty to lackluster leadership. Austin Knudsen, who may become ineligible, meaning constitutionally unfit, to lead the Montana Attorney General’s Office, was re-elected not by a narrow margin, but a tidal wave, though his own disregard for the following the law was repeatedly documented.
I can gripe all I want about politicians ducking questions, but I am left with the unavoidable, sinking feeling that prompts the scariest question of them all: Would the answers matter?