Chapter Eighteen: Advice and Consent
A Test of Institutional Integrity
The phrase “advice and consent” is much discussed these days. Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution declares that the President can nominate and “with the advice and consent of the Senate” appoint various officers of the government. Among these are cabinet secretaries.
On November 13, Donald Trump said he would nominate Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Gaetz resigned his seat in the House of Representatives just before an ethics committee investigation of him was to be released. A couple of senators suggested it would be difficult to get the obviously unqualified Gaetz confirmed. Trump spokesmen Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon said Trump could choose whomever he wants; and the Senate’s role was to fall into line.1
Nevertheless, on November 21, Trump called Gaetz to tell him that he would not be confirmed by the Senate. Gaetz withdrew his nomination, and Trump announced he was nominating somebody else.2
We do not know the truth about this episode. Gaetz is a ridiculous person who was obviously unqualified to be Attorney General. Is there actually any integrity in the Senate? What is going to happen when Pete Hegseth comes up for “advice and consent?”3 That will be an interesting test. Caligula got the Roman Senate to applaud his horse. Will we see the same servility? Time will tell.
Discussion about Trump’s nominees brings to mind the motion picture “Advice and Consent,” released in 1962 and based on Allen Drury’s novel of the same name. You can view this movie at no charge on YouTube, but don’t do this to yourself unless you are feeling masochistic. The movie is—for the most part—clumsy and awkward.
Here is what Pauline Kael had to say about it: “Mindless ‘inside’ story of Washington political shenanigans. Accused of having been a communist, Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) perjures himself. A senator [Don Murray playing Senator Brigham Anderson] is victimized because of a homosexual episode in his past.”4 The Murray character is blackmailed by another senator (played by George Grizzard) and commits suicide rather than have his past exposed.
Just prior to the end of the movie, the Leffingwell confirmation fails for unanticipated reasons. The ambitious blackmailer Grizzard is confronted by the majority leader (played by Walter Pidgeon). The Pidgeon character says, “We tolerate about anything here, prejudice, fanaticism, demagoguery. . . . But you’ve dishonored us.”5
Is there honor in the Senate today? Was there honor in the Senate on February 13, 2021, when it failed to convict an impeached Donald Trump? Comedian Fred Allen said, “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.”6 Is there more integrity in the Senate today than there is sincerity in Hollywood? The weeks and months ahead will yield an answer to that question.
“It’s a fantasy,” wrote one journalist about this movie, “but a revealing one. It revealed how a . . . filmmaker cynically imagined the Senate to be at the end of the Eisenhower years. That this picture could hold any appeal today shows how far that institution has sunk in the half century since, how thorough its dysfunction has become.”7 These words were written in 2010. Is the Senate any better today?
There are two aspects of this movie that make it important, if not as great art then because of the real drama behind the scenes. One aspect deals with homosexuality. The director was pushing the envelope with regard to a subject which in 1962 was still taboo.
The film contains a scene of “the first gay bar to be depicted in post war American cinema.”8 That scene and the story around it are arresting. It is here that the movie differs sharply from the book. The clip below is timestamped to highlight the key passage.
According to one author, “the literary version of [Brigham Anderson, the Don Murray character] kills himself ‘because he is being blackmailed in Washington’ [but] his movie analog commits suicide ‘because he has gone to New York and found people with whom he had something in common and is so repulsed that he sees no alternative to the straight razor.’”9
This observation is striking. The film could hardly be more boring. Almost every frame feels stilted and unreal. There is one love scene between Walter Pidgeon and Gene Tierney which will make your toes curl. But there is something about the treatment of homosexuality in this film that hits home.
Senator Brigham Anderson of Utah (the Don Murray character) returns from Club 602 in New York, goes to his office in the Capitol, and slits his throat “with a dull razor blade.”10 That last detail gives one pause. Of all the ways to commit suicide, slitting one’s throat with a dull razor blade suggests, at least to me, serious self-hatred.
This episode was apparently created in reaction to the suicide of Senator Lester Hunt in 1954. Hunt was a vociferous critic of Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarthy, in response, was out to get him.
“On June 8, 1954, [Senator] Hunt surprised supporters by announcing that he would not seek a second Senate term. Behind his decision was one of the foulest attempts at blackmail in modern political history. His son . . . had been convicted . . . for soliciting an undercover policeman in Lafayette Square. Two of Joe McCarthy's Senate Republican confederates informed Hunt that if he did not leave the Senate when his term ended that year, the conviction would become a major campaign issue. Hunt feared a vicious contest that would add to his son's torments and jeopardize Senate Democrats' chances of picking up the two seats necessary to regain majority control in 1955. Days later, he entered the Russell Building on a quiet Saturday morning, with a .22 caliber Winchester rifle partially obscured under his coat. In a seemingly buoyant mood, he exchanged pleasantries with an unquestioning Capitol Police officer and went to his third-floor office. Minutes later, alone, Hunt pulled the trigger.”11
Another story behind the story of this movie is the relationship between Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton. Laughton plays a senator from South Carolina who is the leading critic of Robert Leffingwell, the candidate for Secretary of State (who is played by Henry Fonda). Both men were world-famous actors. When this movie was made, they hated each other.
Laughton directed Fonda in the stage production of “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” in 1954. “One day Fonda, who was unhappy with both the play and his role, . . . made a remark in anger for which Laughton never forgave him. During the rehearsals, Laughton made a comment about military behavior and Fonda turned on him and said: ‘What do you know about men, you fat, ugly faggot!’ Laughton never spoke to Fonda again,”12 although the Laughton character did speak to the Fonda character in the movie.
Sex and gender have played a greater role in American politics than ever before since Donald Trump has become involved. The Access Hollywood tape still shocks. On May 9, 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery, and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case.13 On May 30, 2024, a jury found Trump guilty of felonies related to the cover-up of sexual activity with an adult film actress.14 On October 31, Trump said, “Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.”15
What about Matt Gaetz?
There is an ethics report about him which has so far been concealed. According to the BBC, Gaetz “is the subject of a long-running investigation by a congressional ethics panel into a number of claims involving drugs, bribes, and sex. Here's all you need to know about the report. A woman who attended a 2017 party with him has testified to the House committee that she saw the then-congressman having sex with a minor, her lawyer has said. The same lawyer alleged on Monday that this witness and another woman were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and called the investigation into him a ‘smear campaign’.”16
Gaetz is not the only public figure close to Trump dealing with such allegations. So also is Trump’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.17 What will happen when Hegseth comes before the Senate for advice and consent? Time will tell.
When Gaetz learned of his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump, he resigned from Congress, putting him out of reach of the investigation by the ethics panel - which deadlocked on whether to release its findings. Will these findings ever be released? No one knows. We do know that sexual aggression is not absent from the incoming administration.
https://www.instagram.com/bannonswarroom/reel/DCZqKm7SLAt/
Eric Bradner, et al., “Gaetz withdraws from attorney general consideration after Trump told him he didn’t have the votes in the Senate,” CNN, November 21, 2024.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pete-hegseth-alleged-sexual-assault-2017-monterey/; Timothy Snyder,” Pete Hegseth: The Short Course,” Thinking About, Substack, November 24, 2024
Pauline Kael, “Advise and Consent,” Copy from the Internet, author’s possession.
The quotation is from the movie, available free on YouTube.
https://korpisworld.com/Quotes/Fred%20Allen.htm
George Packer, “Good Old Days in the Senate,” The New Yorker, February 22, 2010.
James Kirchick, Love and War, The Arts Intel Report, September 10, 2022, https://airmail.news/arts-intel/highlights/love-and-war-992
James Kirchick, Love and War, The Arts Intel Report, September 10, 2022, https://airmail.news/arts-intel/highlights/love-and-war-992
The words quoted are from the movie.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senator_Lester_Hunts_Decision.htm
James Harvey, “Quasimodo in America,” The New York Review of Books, February 15, 1990.
Larry Neumeister, Jennifer Peltz and Michael R. Sisak, “Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse, awards accuser $5M,” Associated Press, May 9, 2023.
Michael R. Sisak, et al., “Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes,” Associated Press, May 31, 2024.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/31/donald-trump-women-protector-wisconsin-rally
Sam Cabral, “What to know about the Matt Gaetz investigation,” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cew2z48rp70o
Casey Tolan, Scott Glover and Sara Murray, “Police report reveals new details from sexual assault allegation against Trump’s defense secretary nominee,” CNN, November 21, 2024.