How To Capitulate

by William Kristol

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)

How do you capitulate to power? Gradually and then suddenly.

If you’re an unimaginably wealthy and powerful billionaire, you start by spiking an editorial in a newspaper you own. You then visit the president-elect and publicly bend the knee. You donate a relatively modest amount—$1 million—to that president-elect’s inaugural fund. You then spend $40 million for a “documentary” on the wife of the president-elect.

Submission occurs gradually and then suddenly.

If you’re an undistinguished but ambitious young federal judge, you start by slowing down an open-and-shut case against the presidential candidate who appointed you. You then decide that the long-established practice of appointing special counsels is unconstitutional. You then reach into the internal workings of the Justice Department to try to prevent the attorney general from releasing a report by that special counsel.

Currying favor occurs gradually and then consistently.

If you’re one of our two major political parties, you first go along with the presidential nominee of your party, however distasteful he is. You then support him as president while still expressing some reservations. But the reservations recede, and you stick with him through his attempt to get a foreign country to help with his re-election.

You then downplay his efforts to overturn the election and stop the peaceful transfer of power: ”What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” You object briefly to his actions on January 6th, but vote overwhelmingly a week later in the House against impeachment, and a month later in the Senate against conviction. You nominate him for president a third time and support him unreservedly. Now you eagerly seek to confirm his nominees, however unqualified, and say not a word against any of his agenda, however irresponsible.

Appeasement occurs gradually and then thoroughly.

There was one person who understood this all along. As he explained twenty years ago: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything . . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

This has been our president-elect’s guiding principle. Our country hasn’t yet proved him wrong.

Now that he’s set to go back to the Oval Office and once again actually be president, the appeasement, the submission, the capitulation will probably get worse.

And it will probably work, at least for a while. The billionaire will get richer. The judge may get promoted. The party will enjoy all the perquisites for power. They and many others will be far better off for having bent the knee than if they had taken a different course.

Still, there is a different course. When I quoted Hemingway above, I thought of John McCain. He loved Hemingway, and often quoted his favorite Hemingway character, Robert Jordan, from For Whom the Bell Tolls. “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”

Is it too much to hope that we might turn the corner at some point soon, and see, in the spirit of John McCain, more fighting and less capitulating?