MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: It Keeps Happening

“You can fool too many people, too much of the time.” ― James Thurber

By Marc C. Johnson

In 1974 a reporter for New Times magazine surveyed 200 congressional staffers, some members of Congress and a group of lobbyists and journalists to sample opinions about a variety of things, including who the group considered “the dumbest” member of Congress.

The winner was a Republican senator from Virginia William L. Scott.

In order, apparently, to prove the assertion, Scott called a news conference to deny it.

There have always been people – almost always men – who make you wonder why genuinely stupid people get elected to high public office.

Well, as they say, it’s a representative democracy so stupid people need representation, too.

We may miss Kristi Noem

Which brings me to Markwayne Mullin, the junior senator from Oklahoma and the man, assuming the Senate confirms him, Donald Trump wants to replace the scandal plagued Kristi Noem at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Mullin’s only apparent qualification for the job, just like Noem, is that he always says nice things about Trump. Otherwise, as they might say in Oklahoma, he couldn’t pour piss root beer out of a boot with instructions on the heel.

Therefore, he’ll be great.

Here’s a clip of Mullin from January where he broke into a rage during a confirmation hearing for, eh, Pete Hegseth.

Something about senators being drunk and getting divorced. It’s a great clip. Markwayne meant to say “give me a break,” but said “give me a joke.”

Oklahoma has … given us a joke, that is.

And quite an admission from Mullin as he defended Hegseth:

“The only reason I’m here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too.”

Behind every successful man …

And here Mullin says it was “a misspoke” – not that he had misspoken, but it was a misspoke – when he said what’s happening in Iran is a war.

But, oops, Mullin had repeatedly claimed we are not at war. So he tried to walk the comment back to, well, not great effect.

Mullin made his first national splash when he threatened to rumble with a witness during a Senate committee meeting. That great boxing referee Bernie Sanders shut it down. A classic bit of Senate history.

More recently the former owner of a plumbing business has been in the news because his investment portfolio has done pretty well since he relocated from Oklahoma to Washington, DC.

Here’s The New York Times:

A few days after Christmas, Senator Markwayne Mullin’s expansive stock portfolio got significantly bigger.

Mr. Mullin reported buying shares in Chevron, the only major U.S. oil company producing in Venezuela. Five days after the purchase, President Trump attacked Venezuela, demanding that its leadership give better terms to U.S. oil companies. Chevron’s stock price has since jumped, even as the market as a whole has slipped.

The Chevron transaction, which Mr. Mullin reported in January, was among as much as $2.8 million he invested in 31 companies on Dec. 29 — and part of a pattern of large and frequent trades that has made him one of the most prolific stock buyers in Congress.

There is no indication that Mr. Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has said he speaks with Mr. Trump “all the time,” had inside knowledge of the administration’s plans before those stock transactions. Federal law doesn’t prohibit members of Congress from trading stock, even in industries overseen by committees on which they serve.

It would appear that when Mullin isn’t on cable TV, which is very often, or jumping up during a committee hearing to punch a witness, he’s doing a whole lot of stock trading:

Mr. Mullin’s transaction records reveal not just frequent trades, but successful ones too. From 2024 to 2026, the returns on Mr. Mullin’s stock purchases outperformed the market by 8 percent, according to Bruce Sacerdote, a Dartmouth economist who examined Mr. Mullin’s trades at the request of The Times and has researched stock trading among members of Congress.

“None of this is evidence of insider trading,” Mr. Sacerdote said. “This could be blind luck.”

Blind luck.

This guy should work for Charles Schwab.

And, God help us, we may miss Kristi when she’s gone.

Islamophobia as a campaign tactic

Mullin has competition for the title of dumbest senator – maybe vilest, too. Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach and GOP senator from Alabama, is definitely in the running.

Tuberville, a Republican candidate for governor, has engaged in increasingly strident attacks on people of the Islamic faith over the last several months. Last week, Tuberville posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “the enemy is inside the gates,” including an image of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York with a picture of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim and the first person of Asian descent to hold that position.

Tuberville, his field goal attempt blocked, reached for a classic:

“When asked whether Muslim Americans in Alabama could have found his post offensive, Tuberville said he’s ‘got some great Muslim friends’ and that he spoke to ‘two Iranians in Alabama this past week about the war. Obviously, they’re Muslim,’” The Hill reported.

Google him. There is a lot more.

Alabama is, again, not sending its best.

Senator Foghorn Leghorn

On a per capita basis the House of Representatives certainly more stupid than the Senate. But with more than four times as many politicians to pick from you’d expect that from the House. I’m sure we all have our favorites.

And then there are guys who play stupid as part of their schtick, a particularly strong example back in the Senate.

Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy really isn’t as stupid as he seems, but he can be both (kinda) funny and crass when he goes all bayou.

Kennedy goes for the Foghorn Leghorn vote with his syrupy southern drawl, but in real life he’s an honors graduate of Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia Law School. He earned a second law degree from Oxford.

Not dumb, but occasionally plays dumb on the TV. Here’s The Guardian on Senator Leghorn:

Kennedy has made a name for himself by delivering “folksy”, sometimes racist statements in an exaggerated southern American accent that has been likened to being somewhere between that of Mr Haney, the con artist from the former CBS sitcom Green Acres, and Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon rooster who appears in Looney Tunes. The latter comparison is so striking that New Orleans’s Times-Picayune newspaper once posted a quiz featuring a series of eccentric statements that was headlined: “Who said it: Sen John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?”

In a Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy once told a Cornell law professor born in Soviet-era Russia: “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade” – insinuating that she was a communist or a foreign agent. The remark came about three years after Kennedy drew ridicule from some quarters for spending a Fourth of July holiday – which recognizes the US’s independence from the UK – in Russia with leaders of his country’s rival power.

Separately, in a tough-on-crime, pro-police campaign ad, Kennedy ended the video by saying: “Look, if you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you’re in trouble, call a crackhead.”

When Kennedy voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to dismantle vaccine science he said:

“To my friends who are upset, I would say with respect, you know, call somebody who cares.”

But it’s all an act, a performance from Lower Hicksville, as long-time Louisiana political observer Bob Mann told The Guardian:

“That role is of a clever hick who, while unsophisticated, is always quick with a put-down for smug city slickers,” Mann said. “If you view him through the lens of someone who is affecting an attitude, the words don’t have to make complete sense. It’s the image and the attitude that count.”

One proof point that Kennedy isn’t as crazy as he often seems: his recent questioning help push Kristi Noem out of a real job. All he had to do was ask a question about whether Kristi had Donald Trump’s permission to feature herself in a $220 million ad campaign.

Kennedy knows where his Trump is buttered.

“I say, I say, boy, you pay attention when I’m talkin’ to ya … “

Now you just watch what comes next, ya hear. Senator Leghorn will lead the charge to confirm the Okie Stock Trader.

The United States Senate has always been something of a haven for odd ball characters, unrepentant racists, clowns, clods and presidential wannabees.

We tend to remember the good ones – George Norris, Howard Baker, Fightin’ Bob LaFollette, Mike Mansfield, Everett Dirksen, Frank Church, Mark Hatfield, Warren Magnuson – while mostly forgetting the cranks and the mountebanks.

So does it matter that a few of our elected representatives are not the sharpest pencils in the box? Remember, it is a “representative” democracy.

As one of the less than sharpest pencils, Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska, once noted in defending G. Harrold Carswell, a truly awful Richard Nixon nominee to the Supreme Court in 1970:

Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.

At least Senator Hruska didn’t call a news conference to utter one of the greatest lines in Senate history, but he had the good sense to make that comment on the Senate floor where the Constitution says you can say pretty much anything no matter how dumb.

We can’t have all Hruskas, don’t ya know.

Ours is a new Age of Mediocracy. We haven’t reached bottom yet, if there is a bottom.

It’s difficult to be an optimist in today’s world and I’m not all that optimistic, but I do focus on realism and try to populate my writing with solid sourcing and not merely opinion. I write these pieces to offer a perspective based on history and particularly American political history since 1900.

These essays are free, but a financial contribution helps support my writing and research, including a new book in progress. Subscribe here for more.

Many thanks.