SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. 23 DECEMBER 2023. My wife read Cassidy Hutchinson’s book. (In 2023 and 2024 Ms. Hutchinson may be the closest we have to John W. Dean in 1973 and 1974?) And for one wild moment a few days ago I thought I might do the same with Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning — “a scathing account of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and urgent plea for America to avoid a repeat,” which “debuted at No 1 on the New York Times’s bestseller list.”

In pursuit of this thought I read Robin Abcarian’s recent review in The Los Angeles Times. Ms Abcarian certainly found the book well worth reading : “You don’t read a book like former Wyoming U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s tell-all looking for literary pearls … You read it to find out what was going on behind the scenes in Congress after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump’s Republican sycophants and enablers schemed with him to overturn the results of a legitimate U.S. election.”

Robin Abcarian also aptly notes that “Liz Cheney is one of the few heroic, high-profile Republicans who were willing to do the right thing after the 2020 election, even if it meant sacrificing her job and her political prospects.”

She is no doubt, an altogether serious conservative politician, whose father Dick Cheney worked long and hard to push the George W. Bush administration in directions that are certainly anathema to me. But to see someone like her stand up against Donald Trump’s Republican sycophants and enablers who schemed to overturn the results of a legitimate U.S. election is an inspiring and even reassuring thing to a (more or less) “North American liberal” such as myself.

At the same time, like (but of course different from) Liz Cheney I am who I am. And another passage from Ms Abcarian’s review made me realize I could not very easily cope with a text that (quite reasonably from its own point of view) included even just several such moments as : “As Liz Cheney prepared to return to Washington from Wyoming in January 2021, her father gave her a hug, and then, she wrote, “He looked at me and with steel in his voice, said, ‘Defend the republic, daughter.’ … ‘I will, Dad,’ she replied. ‘Always.’”

So I did not order Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning from Amazon, and spend these past few days up here on beautiful Lake Huron in the late fall and early winter reading about Ms Cheney’s adventures, as the Trump coup plot unfolded on and before January 6, 2021.

Many years ago now I was immensely impressed (and educated) by what still strikes me as John W. Dean’s brilliant Blind Ambition. (Which so effectively captured the government and politics of Richard Nixon, who for all his authentic crookedness was a far better president than Donald Trump.) But I have now (on somewhat imperfect information) concluded that neither Cassidy Hutchinson’s Enough or Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor is quite the Blind Ambition of our present era. (But perhaps I am just now a little too old, like both Joe Biden and Donald Trump?)

I nonetheless continue to admire and deeply respect both very smart and able ladies for what they are doing in the ongoing American political debate today. And just a few days ago now I bumped into a tweet (or Xpost?) on some words from Liz Cheney that I think summarize her serious conservative understanding of the current and increasingly troubling (and looming) American political crisis, in some simple but forceful and convincing language :

“Republicans against Trump@RpsAgainstTrump … Liz Cheney on Fox News:’ You know, I come here to Fox, and I sit in the Charles Krauthammer greenroom…Charles taught us a whole bunch of things. But one of them is that some things have to matter. And rising above politics — rising above partisanship — recognizing our duty to the Constitution is the most conservative of all conservative principles.” … 1:52 PM · Dec 19, 2023.”

I am especially struck by two thoughts here : first, “some things have to matter” ; and second “recognizing our duty to the Constitution is the most conservative of all conservative principles.” This language to me nicely summarizes a reasonable or principled statement of what US conservatives are or ast least ought to be loyal to — the Constitution (a not at all long document agreed to in 1789). And that is the ultimate political loyalty that matters in what Dick Cheney calls the republic.

US progressives, some might urge, have a somewhat different but finally related view of the ultimate political loyalty that matters in the American democratic republic. This is not to some abstraction such as the Constitution, but to some abstraction such as the People.

And these two renditions of the same tune are related by the very first words of (or preamble to) the not at all long document of 1789 : “We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Many more evolutionary and other human complexities could be raised, of course. But the holiday season has already been unfolding. And one last seasonal point is that whether you believe in The Constitution or The People (who ordained and established it and … ), you believe in something altogether different from The Leader, who is nowhere recognized in “this Constitution for the United States of America.”

And that, like so many other things these days, just makes me think about Liz Cheney’s A Memoir and a Warning and wonder, more and more : Just what is going to happen to America in 2024?