Virginia’s Upper Body
Finding inspiration in all the wrong places
by Gordon C. Morse
Virginia Senate Democrats – the leadership, primarily – have taken a wrecking crew mentality to higher education and exposed themselves to condemnation for doing the very things they passionately denounce others for doing.
In this instance, on Thursday afternoon, the majority Democrats serving on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee made quick work of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s recent board appointments to George Mason University, the University of Virginia and Virginia Military Institute.
Figuratively speaking, the Democrats balled up the list of names and contemptuously threw it out the window. It was meant to be preemptive and performative, a crude demonstration of their presumed power to act independently of the General Assembly as a whole and lay waste to Younkin’s choices.
This was Round Two. The Senate P&E Committee did this previously in June and in similarly obnoxious fashion. That little dance ushered in litigation and the matter now sits before the Virginia Supreme Court.
Republican committee members asked, why do this now? What was the point?
But the Democrats were not in a talkative mood and likely would have preferred a darkened space to do their work, removed and detached, where they could punch, run and suffer no bother.
They were, however, good enough to distribute a copy of the letter they’d had dashed off to Gov. Youngkin.
Signed by Scott Surovell, Louise Lucas and Mamie Locke (respectively, the Senate Majority Leader, Senate President Pro Tempore and the Senate Democratic Caucus chairman) it ostentatiously announced that the Senate (defined as the three of them, presumably) “has been compelled to reject twenty-two of your nominees to these critical governing bodies.”
“Compelled?” – meaning induced, coerced, obliged or forced? How so?
Admitting that the Senate P&E Committee’s action was “unprecedented” (another word for “extraordinary”), their actions found justification in Youngkin’s “inappropriate nominations and acquiescence to outside political influence.”
This, they say, “has created significant uncertainty and instability within our higher education system at a time when these institutions need steady, qualified leadership.”
You know, of the sort routinely provided by the existing General Assembly.
“Our universities face mounting challenges,” the letter went on, “including potential federal investigations and pressure from the new Trump Administration’s Department of Justice, threats to our international student admissions, and research dollars.”
Trump. This is what it’s about – and Virginia be damned in the process.
As it happens, the Trump administration has made a contribution that might be fairly described as turmoil-inducing. Its busy DOJ has suited up and taken to enforcing the law, as it sees it. No one would describe its efforts as subtle.
But, lest we forget, there is that other letter of October 19, 2020 – likewise signed by Lucas and Locke, along with other Democratic Party leaders, including Gov. Ralph Northam — that tore into Virginia Military Institute for its “ongoing structural racism” and supposedly “Lost Cause” enthusiasms.
That letter went on a bit in hysterical fashion and laid the basis – also unprecedented, as in “never been done before” – for a notorious investigation of VMI that deliberately hurt the school and forced the resignation of its superintendent.
So what is the difference exactly between the havoc conjured up by the Trump administration and the merry intrusions by the Virginia Senate?
Not much, really. It’s political theater of an especially virulent variety and fatuously justified.
Does President Trump make untrue claims?
Does he consciously misrepresent events?
Does he cast aspersions, toss calumnies and scatter slanders?
C’mon. Not occasionally, but all the day and into the evening.
In response, this letter signed by Surovell, Lucas and Locke mimics the form. It makes stuff up. It says things that are demonstrably untrue. It’s maliciously fictive.
Just to be clear, when I say, “in response,” I mean the letter, via Youngkin, responds to Trump and does so in order to display the senators’ readiness to act arbitrarily and without regard to the damage done to institutions and other human beings.
Effectively, it’s a response-in-kind. Eye for an eye. Tit for tat.
“At this critical juncture,” the letter continues, “our universities require board members who can unite rather than divide, who possess relevant experience in higher education governance, and who are committed to protecting academic freedom and institutional integrity.”
Actually, such board members, so characterized, would be beneficial to the Commonwealth and its institutions of higher learning.
And that’s why – right? – the Virginia General Assembly, as an institution, has historically required that appointed college and university board members be so equipped.
No, that’s not right. The General Assembly has never done that. Not once. Not for a fleeting moment. There’s never been an explicit institutional review process installed or undertaken with that intent in mind.
Yet, by and large, Virginia has reliably achieved such outcomes, but on the basis of cooperative, collegial effort. In the main, on the matter of board appointments, it has avoided the rotten business of political partisanship and overt public warfare.
Virginia had a workable system that, for reasons subjective and intangible, got the job done. Good people, responsible and true, ended up guiding the affairs of our state schools.
Call it a miracle, if you like, but history validates the claim.
Did occasional clunkers end up on the boards? Yup. Every governor coughs up some. There is no Virginia equivalent of a papal enclave when it comes to board appointments. Good will substitutes for it and all the smoke remains in the room.
Or did. The system that existed, for the selection of college and university board members, is now kaput. This witless letter, signed by three grievously irresponsible state senators, administered the “coup de grâce.”
In a board sense, does the Trump era and its way of doing things help explain the Virginia Senate’s actions on Thursday?
Yes, it does. Trump has done what he can to spike the well of American democracy and now Democrats, inexplicably, have rushed to do likewise.
Can you fix bad things by doing like-minded, other bad things?
The answer would be no.
You don’t fight arbitrary political acts with other arbitrary political acts.
You don’t endanger and undermine essential democratic norms – the manner of board appointments exactly defines a Virginia democratic norm – and not risk the erosion of public trust and lost institutional legitimacy.
There’s a book that’s sat on my shelf since the early 1980s: “The Invention of Tradition.” Historian Eric Hobsbawn gathered some celebrated colleagues and, in a series of essays, tried to get at this subject.
You get traditions though a set of practices, usually governed by openly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, that endeavor to inculcate certain tenets and norms of behavior by repetition.
Those are Hobsbawn’s words, more or less.
Continuity with the past is thus implied, but that is not really the thing. The past is less relevant than the future. We construct these traditions in order to legitimize institutions, promote social cohesion and solidify value systems.
In short, it’s a commitment to a set of principles and Virginia, being somewhat historically inclined to that habit, has preserved such practices.
Call them “customs,” if you prefer.
Surovell, Lucas and Locke betray their contempt for Virginia and its ways. They would do wrack and ruin to the Commonwealth for the sake of doing battle and harm to the administration that presently sits above the Potomac River.
Does this business get Virginia anywhere good?
No, it does not.
Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column is republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire and Bacon’s Rebellion.
