The Republican Memory Hole

George Orwell gets dragged out a lot these days: Whenever someone wants to talk about the surveillant state or dishonest political messaging, we hear about the thought police or doublespeak. Talks of American militarism seem to inevitably lead to the hoary truism that “War is Peace,” just as discussion of American jingoism takes us to talk of Big Brother.

Not to downplay Orwell — I’m a pretty big fan! — but there’s a point at which the word “Orwellian” starts to lose its meaning.

With all this Orwell adoration, I’m surprised that political commentators rarely mention the memory hole. For those who haven’t read 1984 recently, here’s a refresher: Winston Smith, the hero of the novel, is a journalist whose job involves rectifying old historical accounts to new political truths. As Big Brother issues statements that contradict his prior predictions, Winston digs up the old articles, edits them to reflect Big Brother’s new pronouncements, and sends the original article into the “memory hole” — a slot on his desk that leads to an incinerator. When he’s done, the past is erased, the present reality is reinforced, and the truth is gone.

I bet every politician wishes he had a memory hole. If Biden had one, he could pretend that he didn’t back racist legislation in 1994, and that he didn’t botch the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing in 1991. Instead, he had to explain that he made mistakes. He had to apologize to Anita Hill and make the case that a cruel policy appeared responsible 26 years ago.

In the absence of a memory hole, that’s how grownups handle their checkered history: they admit mistakes, try to show that they’ve evolved, and promise to try to do better in the future.

Remember the impeachment hearing in January? That’s when the President’s lawyer, Pat Cipollone, argued that, if the American people felt that their President had committed a crime, it was their “sacred right” to vote him out of office — and that, by convicting him, the Senate would be robbing the American people of their voice.

Republicans picked up the call: Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said “The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”

Joni Ernst (R-IA) repeated the refrain, stating “Under the Constitution, impeachment wasn’t designed to be a litmus test on every action of the President — elections were designed to be that check.” She added that impeaching the President “would remove the ability of the American people to make their own decision at the ballot box in November.”

Even Mitch McConnell got into the act, saying “As far as I’m concerned, [impeachment is] in the rearview mirror, and the consequences of it in terms of the future are up to the voters of the country to decide who they want to lead the government.”

Fast forward nine months, and the voters of the United States have followed Alexander, Ernst and McConnell’s advice. They’ve done what the Senate would not: hold Trump accountable for his actions. We could argue about whether the 77,666,740 people who voted to replace the President were inspired by his attempt to strong arm a foreign leader, his mishandling of COVID, his decision to put kids in cages, or any of the dozens of other crimes and failures of his administration. But vote they did, and by a margin of over 5 million people, they made it clear that they want the President to leave the White House and go back to Mar-a-Lago.

As for the three Senators I quoted above, neither they nor most of their Republican colleagues have called the President out on his attempts to undermine what was clearly a free and honest election. Their impassioned defense of democracy in February has given way to a stony silence in November as that democracy is once again under attack from the White House.

Are they perhaps hoping that their words, like so much of the Senate’s dithering over the last four years, will go into the memory hole?