John Kennedy

As Bill Cassidy’s dramatically fraught tenure in the U.S. Senate comes to an end, it occurs to me that maybe I’ve been a little tough on him — if only in comparison to how I’ve written about fellow Louisiana Republican John Kennedy.

I chalk it up to two things. The first is that, to Cassidy’s credit, he offered a modicum of hope to those who still want Congress to behave like an independent branch of government that’s just as responsible for what happens in our country as the executive, even if he frequently dashed it.

The second is that any story is more interesting if you don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

Cassidy, at least, often kept us guessing as he wrestled with whether he’d put aside his own medical expertise and enable President Donald Trump’s unqualified secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to wreak havoc on vaccine protocols. Too often, yes, but not always.

Kennedy, no matter how many homespun catchphrases he coins, no matter how often he offers valid, well-informed criticism of the Trump administration’s excesses, bad decisions and acts of outright incompetence, somehow always stops short of doing anything about it.

This was on full display last Sunday, when Kennedy made an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that was highlighted by one of his parting thoughts. Asked by host Kristen Welker if, in light of the call by North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis to replace Pete Hegseth, Kennedy had confidence in the secretary of defense, Kennedy responded: “Well, it’s not my place to have confidence in him.”

Then whose place is it, exactly?

Kennedy went on to zero in on just one of Hegseth’s many ongoing controversies, his campaign against a slew of seasoned, well-respected military leaders in the midst of a war.

“He seems to be firing some pretty good people,” Kennedy acknowledged. “Whether they deserve it or not, I don’t know.”

But then there was this: “I voted for him. I’d probably vote for him again until evidence is shown to me that he shouldn’t have fired these guys. But I’m not worried about the personalities.”

Is that really how congressional oversight works in Kennedy’s mind? Deference to a president’s prerogative no matter how badly things are off track? Serious questions over the state of our military nothing more than “personalities?”

There was a lot more of this in the interview over multiple topics. Without naming names and explicitly avoiding casting blame, Kennedy peppered his carefully curated schtick with some surprisingly tough critiques of the status quo.

On the economy: “Except for inflation, which as I said, sucks, the economy’s solid. Growth is OK, unemployment’s low. Wages, they’re going up. ... But look, that inflation is a big if. And it’s gutting people like a fish.”

On Russia and Ukraine: “Vladimir Putin, this guy’s a pirate. He’s got blood under his fingernails. He doesn’t care about a bunch of pretty talk. You don’t get any credit for kissing his ass. You’ve got to show him you mean business.”

There was even this, on the controversy over data centers: “They’re going to have to stop going into these states and demanding all these tax subsidies and demanding all the tax breaks. They’re all rich.” (Got that, Gov. Jeff Landry?)

The question, of course, is whether any of that will amount to anything beyond talk show talk.

With Cassidy, you knew it could. Same with Tillis, by the way, who cast the pivotal vote to confirm Hegseth despite deep doubts, just as Cassidy did with RFK.

Both, not at all coincidentally, are on their way out of office come January: Cassidy as the casualty of Trump’s revenge campaign for his 2021 vote to convict in the second impeachment, Tillis of his own volition but knowing he’s on the hit list too.

Kennedy, like most of the Senate’s remaining and likely incoming Republicans, seems utterly uninterested in risking his standing in Trumpworld, no matter the stakes.

In fact, another quote from the “Meet the Press” interview seems to sum up his attitude. Kennedy was talking about how the Senate declined to put forth legislation to address inflation, but he could easily have been speaking about how senators like him are approaching their jobs these days.