Since breaking with the Republican Party over the emergence of Donald Trump, I’ve written two books analyzing the ongoing disgrace of my former party. In both, I was careful not to criticize any former clients for their support of Trump. The collapse of the party as a moral force was a collective failure in which I had played a role by helping elect Republican governors and senators over about half the country. It was too convenient to blame others.
But watching Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi defend Pete Hegseth at the latter’s recent confirmation hearing was just too much for me to remain silent.
For those who may not be familiar with Senator Wicker, he was a long-time congressman from Tupelo, Mississippi, appointed to the Senate by Governor Haley Barbour (another former client) on the resignation of Senator Trent Lott in November 2007. I worked for Roger in his 2008 race against former Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove. Wicker won that race by 10 points, a deceptively lopsided margin that hides the reality of a very tough campaign in which he often trailed the popular Musgrove.
In many ways, Roger and I come from the same world. Our fathers were prominent in the Mississippi legal establishment—his dad was a larger-than-life circuit judge, and mine was a founding partner of what is now Mississippi’s largest law firm. We both worked as congressional pages for Democratic Mississippi congressmen. We’re fanatical Ole Miss football fans. He’s a devoted reader and lover of books. The last time I saw Roger was at the Mississippi Book Festival in August of 2016 when Trump had just been nominated, a development we both took as astonishing and depressing. He took me aside to quote Yeats’s “The Second Coming” with a grim passion:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
I know Roger Wicker. He’s a good and decent man who would have nothing to do with a tattooed loudmouth desperate for attention who uses alcohol as an excuse to disrespect women. In both the House and the Senate, Wicker devoted much of his career to strengthening the foundations of the alliances that are critical to U.S. national security. In January 2023, he took to the Senate floor to deliver a compelling and emotional appeal for the moral and political necessity of defending Ukraine: “Mr. President, Ukraine can win this war. Ukraine must win this war. But we and our allies have to do our part to help them.”
The Germans have a word—of course—for feeling the embarrassment of someone else: Fremdschämen, which translates as “external shame.” Fremdschämen washes over me when I see Wicker debasing himself by hand-holding the unqualified secretary of Defense nominee of Donald Trump, who was first elected with the help of Russia’s security services and hails Vladimir Putin as a “genius.”
Why? Why doesn’t Wicker use the power of his position as chairman of the Armed Services Committee to insist that Trump nominate a serious person with the experience and gravitas to lead the most powerful military in the history of the world? Wicker is 73 years old and was just reelected in 2024. What is he afraid of? That he might be primaried in a race held at the end of the decade? What compels a man at the peak of a career to violate fundamental principles voiced over three decades?
Trump knows that Hegseth is a buffoon. He nominates someone like Hegseth as proof of his power that he can make men and women who consider themselves guardians of American security bend to his will. It’s a win-win for Trump. He gets a secretary of Defense who will be desperately loyal to the man who elevated him from a boozy co-host of a weekend cable show to a position of immense power. And he gets to assert his dominance over Republican senators who, four years ago, were running for their lives from a Trump-inspired mob. Humiliation through subservience is the point.
Some time ago, I had a going-out-of-business sale with respect to any optimism about my old party. Witnessing the debasing spectacle of Wicker’s support for Hegseth is like watching a friend drink himself to death. The sadness and pain are only enhanced by the knowledge that there is nothing to be done to stop the self-destruction.
Wicker nailed it when he quoted Yeats to describe the emergence of Trump. But now, eight years later, the poem is not only about Donald Trump, it is about Roger Wicker.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yes, the center did not hold.
