I watched as much of Neera Tanden’s confirmation hearing yesterday as I could stand. It amounted to about 20 minutes, off and on.
Sen. Rob Portman probed Tanden’s nasty tweets about some of his Republican colleagues. Tanden expressed regret. It seemed to me not only that she was faking it, but that she wasn’t really trying to conceal the fakery.
Her sing-song delivery cried out insincerity. Had Tanden not made it clear that she was just going through the motions, she would have risked discrediting herself with those whose approval she wants the most.
Tanden said she was sorry for “any hurt” her language has caused. But Tanden knows the problem with her language isn’t hurt feelings. If anything, her targets, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, probably consider her tirades a badge of honor.
The problem with her tweets is that they reveal her to be a nasty, intemperate partisan. They are a window into a vicious soul. Nor are they the only such window. Her treatment of staff and associates, including a physical assault on a top editor at ThinkProgress after he asked Hillary Clinton about the war in Iraq, is another.
People who feel as Tanden does about political opponents and who lack the restraint to hide those feelings from the public shouldn’t hold important government positions. It’s as simple as that.
However, I assume Tanden will be confirmed. For most Senate Democrats, her viciousness is a feature, not a bug. For the few others, it’s not disqualifying.
If roles were reversed, a few Republican Senators would probably balk at a nominee like Tanden. But I don’t expect that any Democrats will.
Tanden shouldn’t be confirmed, but there’s a bright side to this. The head of Biden’s Office of Management and Budget was always going to be someone of Tanden’s ideology. The fact that it’s someone as visible and controversial as Tanden is advantageous for conservatives.
Tanden is a walking rebuttal of the claim that Joe Biden is serious about uniting the country. If he were serious, he wouldn’t have given a key job to a vicious partisan. The sooner America disabuses itself of Biden’s unification lie, the better.
In addition, an opposition party always needs people it can cast as symbols of what’s evil about an administration. Tanden will take on that role, and she will not be alone.
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