SONGS SUNG BLUE: She was the breakout star of the hearing!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2023

Who is Elise Stefanik? Without any question, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) turned out to be the break-out star of last Tuesday's show. 

With that unquestionable fact in mind, it's interesting to note how long the show had dragged on before the angry congressional rep was granted her initial five minutes.

The show to which we refer is last Tuesday's congressional hearing featuring those college presidents from MIT, Harvard and Penn. In theory, the hearing had been called to investigate a very important question. 

In practice, much of the hearing went a great deal like this:

CHAIRWOMAN FOXX (12/5/23): Miss Stefanik, you're recognized for five minutes.

REP. STEFANIK: Dr. Gay, a Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African-Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?

GAY: Our commitment to—

STEFANIK (instantly interrupting): It's a yes or no question! 

Is that corrected [sic]? Is that OK for students to call for the mass murder of African Americans at Harvard? Is that protected free speech?

GAY: Our commitment to free—

STEFANIK (instantly interrupting again): It's a yes or no question!

As we'll continue to note, Harvard has a lot to be embarrassed about in the wake of last Tuesday's hearing. In our view, first on the list might be this fact:

At one time, not long ago, Harvard actually admitted Stefanik as an undergraduate! 

In fairness, no admission procedure can ever be perfect. But Harvard could sensibly be embarrassed today by the decision it made way back then. 

At any rate, last Tuesday's hearing ran for almost five hours. As you can see from this C-Span videotape, an hour and a half had been burned away before Chairwoman Foxx recognized Stefanik for his first five-minute session.

Stefanik would emerge as the day's breakout inquisitor. That said:

Given the focus of the hearing, Stefanik opened with a slightly odd question. Tomorrow, we'll post Michelle Goldberg's best guess about where that initial question was likely intended to take us.

That said, as soon as President Gay started to answer, Stefanik abruptly cut her off. She asked her question a second time, then cut Gay off again.

She had asked "a yes or no question," the imperious inquisitor insistently said. Just that quickly, she advanced the dumbbell "yes or no" construct which persistently rules at our flailing nation's embarrassing congressional hearings.

If we might briefly pick a nit, we'd have to say that Stefanik's opening question didn't quite perfectly parse. That said, her attitude was fairly clear as she interrupted her target, then quickly did so again.

For reasons which are understandable, such interruptions are the inevitable fruit of the congressional "five-minute rule." At any rate, so began the series of inquisitions which made Stefanik the star of last Tuesday's show.

As we noted yesterday, the New York Times filed four news reports about the December 5 hearing in last week's print editions.  The reports appeared on December 6, December 7 and December 9, and on Sunday, December 10. 

By the time of the December 7 report, a song sung blue could already be heard. One major thought leaders was already being quoted saying this:

SAUL AND HARTOCOLLIS (12/7/23): Even the liberal academic Laurence Tribe found himself agreeing with Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, who sharply questioned Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay.

“I’m no fan of @RepStefanik but I’m with her here,” the Harvard law professor wrote on the social media site X. “Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.”

Quickly taking to Twitter, "even the liberal" Professor Tribe had already said it. He was no fan of Stefanik, he said, but he was "with her here."

By the time of the December 9 news report, many other such assessments were coming from blue thought leaders and never-Trump conservatives. In her report, Annie Karni quoted Tribe again, then offered a string of like-minded testimonials:

KARNI (12/9/23): Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on social media that he was “no fan” of Ms. Stefanik. But, he added: “I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.” (He declined to comment further on Ms. Stefanik.)

Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said that the testimony of Ms. Magill was a “failure of leadership.”

Representatives Seth Moulton and Jake Auchincloss, both Democrats from Massachusetts and Harvard graduates, released a joint statement saying that “Harvard ranks last out of 248 universities for support of free speech. But when it comes to denouncing antisemitism, suddenly the university has anxieties about the First Amendment. It rings hollow.”

That Ms. Stefanik emerged as the voice of reason in the hearing was a sobering thought for many of her detractors. More than any other member of Congress, Ms. Stefanik represents to Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans the worst of what happened to the G.O.P. under the sway of Mr. Trump.

An alumna of the George W. Bush White House and a protégée of former Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the mainstream conservative from Wisconsin, Ms. Stefanik was once seen as a pragmatic and sober-minded Republican. Mr. Ryan described her in 2019 in a Time magazine profile as “the future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America.”

Instead, she made a political calculation to remain the future of her changing party—by unequivocally embracing Mr. Trump, his repeated falsehoods that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and his inflammatory rhetoric that often stokes racial division.

That prompted a break between her and her alma mater. After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, Harvard’s Institute of Politics removed Ms. Stefanik from its advisory board, citing her “public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence.”

Ms. Stefanik at the time called her removal “a rite of passage and badge of honor.”

Bill Kristol, the prominent anti-Trump Republican whom Ms. Stefanik once worked with, said he was on multiple text chains with fellow Harvard alumni who shared a similar reaction watching clips from the hearing. The overall sentiment, he said, was, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Elise Stefanik is doing a very good job of putting Claudine Gay on the spot.”

[...]

Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, was among the Democrats conceding that Ms. Stefanik was right, but he said it did not change his view of her.

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” he said. “She continues to be an odious demagogue.”

At least in the way they were quoted, some of those people restricted themselves to criticisms of the  college presidents. 

As a general matter, we agree. The presidents frequently showed a stunning lack of transparency, skill self-awareness in the way they responded to Stefanik's drumbeat of questions and assertions as the day wore on.

At least in the way he was paraphrased, Rep. Torres had gone quite a bit farther. According to Karni, Torres "conceded that Stefanik [had been] right"—and Karni said that Torres was only one among a number of Democrats (and other detractors) who had offered this assessment of Stefanik's performance.

This brings us to some key questions:

Was Stefanik actually "right" in whatever it was she actually said at last Tuesday's hearing? By the way, what exactly had she said? 

What exactly had been learned from the fusillade of angry questions she had continued to fire at the presidents as the hearing wore on?

In our view, the presidents were often remarkably inept this day—but we would also have to say that Stefanik's performance was worse. Having said that, so what?

According to Karni's reporting, it had started with Professor Tribe, and it had proceeded from there. Some unknown number of Democrats had said that Stefanik was right in whatever it was that she had said and done. 

Along the way in the passage we've posted, Karbi explained why those observers, starting with Tribe, didn't enjoy awarding Stefanik the win. She's "an odious demagogue," Torres was finally quoited saying. 

Something, though, the odious demagogue had in some manner been right!

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the questions Stefanik posed as her inquisition continued. We'll also look at her endless interruptions, and at the undisguised dumbness which might have Harvard embarrassed today about past admission procedures. 

In our view, the college presidents performed quite poorly this day, but Stefanik's performance was worse. We'd have to call it a "song sung blue" when so many liberals and Democrats seemed to think, even to say, that Stefanik had gotten it "right." 

Tomorrow: Our blue tribe's basic skills