A Lame-Duck Senator Shows More Teeth Than a Would-Be Prince

I start from the only effectual truth we are given. A president proposes an “anti-weaponization” fund. He wants Todd Blanche as attorney general. The senator from Texas has not objected. Then the president endorses a primary opponent against this same senator. Only after that blow does the senator withhold his support for Blanche’s nomination, using his lame-duck position to stand in the way and, as one report has it, to “wield his leverage.” The president lashes out in response and complains that the senator “never had a problem” with the fund before. Strip away the modern names and you have an old story: a chief trying to rule with borrowed arms, and a captain who remembers they are his.

When I wrote in *The Prince*, as translated by W. K. Marriott, that a ruler must rely on arms of his own and not on mercenaries and auxiliaries, I had in mind condottieri who changed sides when their paymaster offended them. Here the senator plays the condottiere and the captain of infantry both at once. His vote is a weapon the president does not control. It belonged to him as long as their interests aligned and as long as he was not publicly threatened. The moment the president arms a challenger in the primary field, he turns his own ally into a free company, and free companies live by opportunity. The man who governs with such instruments must expect that their swords remember who holds their livelihood.

The senator’s timing exposes his motive more clearly than any speech. He does not discover a conscience about the “anti-weaponization” fund when it is proposed. He discovers it when his political survival is put in question. Many will call this hypocrisy. I call it the usual order of human affairs. As I argued in the *Discourses on Livy*, men reveal their true nature when necessity presses; until then they dissemble, or even deceive themselves. Once the president blesses a rival, the senator faces a simple calculation: if he submits, he dies quietly in politics; if he uses his remaining powers, he can at least trade pain for pain, and perhaps win new patrons from those alarmed by the president’s reach.

This is virtù of a certain low but effective kind. He cannot keep his seat by charm; the endorsement has already gone elsewhere. What he can do is raise the price of his destruction. By blocking Blanche, he shows every future prince that punishing him carries costs. He also demonstrates to his colleagues that lame-duck status does not mean political death if one still has procedural arms. In Florence I saw many who, once condemned, went meekly and were forgotten, and others who, in their fall, made such a noise that every future government had to bargain with men of their sort. It is better, when you must go down, to go down as an example. That too is a way of maintaining yourself, if not in office, then in reputation and utility.

The president, for his part, acts as many new princes do when their authority is slighted: he lashes out. He reminds the world that the senator had no objection earlier, presenting himself as the injured party. This is an appeal to appearance, and appearance matters, because most men judge more by the eyes than the hands. Yet the more interesting fact is that he could not prevent the defection. To curse a soldier who deserts is natural; to have relied on his loyalty without giving him secure place or fear is imprudent. When I compared fortune to a river that sweeps away those who build no dykes, I meant exactly this: a leader who rests on passing favor and endorsements, without firm instruments in the senate and the laws, will see his designs overturned at the first flood of injured pride.

The “anti-weaponization” fund itself, as far as one can see, is a banner without an army. We know of no clear enforcement structure, no coalition of senators bound to it irreversibly, no financial architecture that would make it indispensable to rival factions. It is a proclamation that something will be defended or avenged, but proclamations do not arrest anyone and do not confirm any attorneys general. A reform without arms of its own rests on the goodwill of those it would later constrain. The moment one of those grandees feels menaced or slighted, he will turn that same reform into a hostage, as this senator does, and there is little the proposer can do but shout.

Some will object that the real scandal is personal pique guiding public appointments. A republic, they will say, should not have its chief law officer chosen or rejected in a duel of wounded egos. I agree with the first half and shrug at the second. In free orders, the ambitions and rivalries of the great are not abolished; they are constrained and made useful. The question is not whether men pursue their own preservation, but whether the institutional dykes channel that drive into bargaining, open opposition, and visible costs rather than secret plots. Here the struggle is at least in the open. It teaches every citizen a lesson about the dangers of governing through personal loyalty, and every senator a lesson about the weapons that remain even when the prince withdraws his favor. That is a harsh civics, but it is civics all the same.

uncertainty_note: I write with only the bare outline of this quarrel, and I must therefore judge its actors by the thin light of timing and public statements rather than the fuller counsels and private fears that would reveal all their intentions.