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Seventy five years ago the junior Republican senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith, was the first to speak out in the U.S. Senate against the dangerous demagoguery of Joe McCarthy. She presented her colleagues with her Declaration of Conscience warning of the dangers of the “Four Horsemen of Calumny, Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.”
Then the issue was inappropriate use of usual procedures to burnish the power and reputation of McCarthy and destroy the lives of McCarthy’s critics. Today we are at an eerily similar inflection point, where I believe a very popular president/president elect who has used the Four Horsemen of Calumny to great effect, but this time threatens not just individuals, but the basic structure of our democracy.
Now fairly elected, Trump seemingly seeks to pack his administration with advisors and cabinet members whose loyalty is to him rather than the Constitution that has served so well for centuries. To head our Defense Department he has put forth a man who has no demonstrated ability to manage a large department, and though he has indicated he will curb an alleged tendency to drink to excess, I think there is no record that he will be able to do that.
It is now incumbent on our current Republican senator to consider whether she, like her predecessor, Smith, will have the stamina and judgment to stand up to the threats and blandishments that will come at her if she insists on a more qualified candidate for the position of secretary of defense. We, as her constituents, have an opportunity to encourage Sen. Susan Collins to again demonstrate her good judgment.
Jack Nobel
Lincoln
