Middleboro Review 2: POLITICO NIGHTLY: The other meltdown on Washington’s radar

Friday, January 6, 2023

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The other meltdown on Washington’s radar

With help from Joanne Kenen

STILL SPEAKERLESS— Another day without a speaker. California Rep. Kevin McCarthy came up short for the third day in a row after five additional ballots failed to deliver the votes required for him to become the next Speaker of the House.

Even offering concessions — including on issues once viewed as red-lines — was not enough to win over any of the 21 detractors. Most GOP objectors unified around Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) but Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) nominated Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) on the ninth and 10th ballots and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) casted multiple symbolic votes for former President Donald Trump.

As Nightly went to press, the speakership fight was poised to go to a 12th ballot for the first time since the Civil War era. Multiple Republican lawmakers have said they will have to leave town Friday for family concerns.

Travelers wait in line before passing through a security checkpoint at Denver International Airport. Thousands of flights were canceled during the holiday season. | Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

GROUNDED— The holidays are over but the woes Southwest Airlines inflicted on thousands of people, including passengers and its own staff, haven’t been forgotten .

Last week, for several days, the airline canceled as much as 60 percent to 70 percent of its entire flight schedule. This week, Dallas-based Southwest told customers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed that they would get 25,000 frequent-flier points, in addition to refunds and reimbursement for unexpected costs like hotels and meals.

But the Transportation Department, headed by the Biden administration’s talker-in-chief Pete Buttigieg, has pledged to hold the airline to account , and Congress likely will hold hearings on the sordid affair that’s still being unwound.

But what could really happen to Southwest, the former upstart “budget” airline that has made “love” so much part of its marketing that it trades on the New York Stock Exchange as the ticker symbol LUV? (Former slogan: “Somebody Else up There who Loves You.”)

In the short-term, probably not much. DOT has regulations in place that govern when airlines must issue refunds, and what kind of refunds must be offered. The key is typically whether a flight is disrupted over something that is under the airline’s control, such as a maintenance issue — or by something out of its control, such as weather. A “controllable” disruption to a passenger’s flight typically means they’ll receive more favorable treatment.

Buttigieg has already broadcast that his agency will interpret Southwest’s mess as a controllable problem, even though it began with bad winter weather. But the airline will almost certainly also be scrutinized for fines, which can take some time to work through.

Congress may well have other plans. Southwest’s timing wins them the dubious honor of being in lawmakers’ crosshairs just as both chambers turn to writing a bill that will reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, an exercise that happens once about every four or five years. It is a major aviation policy bill and will host a myriad of fights over how airlines are overseen — and would be the logical vehicle for any big changes.

That being said, most of what caused Southwest’s meltdown has to do with its business practices, and those things Congress isn’t likely to touch. For instance, it’s difficult to imagine lawmakers mandating that Southwest spend money to upgrade its creaky technology that matches crews to planes. It seems even less likely that lawmakers would order Southwest to change its business model from point-to-point to the hub and spoke system most major airlines use.

Lawmakers could, though, mandate changes to the way passenger refunds are handled, and other things that are frequent problems, like lost baggage. DOT is already working on regulations that seek to shore up some of these, in fact. Some have called for regulators to force airlines to book stranded passengers on other airlines — but that would prompt a big fight among moneyed aviation interests.

At minimum, expect Southwest’s CEO to be on the hot seat before the Senate. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has already said she plans to task the Senate Commerce Committee she chairs with getting to the bottom of the winter holiday disruptions.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Contact tonight’s author at kwolfe@politico.com or on Twitter at @kathrynwolfe .

WHAT'D I MISS?

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) will not run for re-election in 2024. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

— Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow announces she won’t seek re-election: Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s decision to not run for reelection jolted national Democrats today, setting off a mad scramble for a newly open battleground seat in 2024 . At least two prominent Democrats — Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Debbie Dingell — are seriously considering a run, according to people familiar with their thinking. But several other House members could also take a look at it, including Reps. Dan Kildee and Haley Stevens, according to several Michigan Democrats.

— Biden launches defense of student debt relief at Supreme Court: President Joe Biden’s efforts to cancel student debt for millions of Americans “fall comfortably” within the law and enjoy “clear authorization” from Congress , the Justice Department argued Wednesday in its opening brief defending the policy before the Supreme Court. The court filing, submitted late Wednesday evening, marks the beginning of a high-stakes battle at the court in the coming months over the fate of one of Biden’s major domestic policy programs. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in February in two cases challenging the debt relief program, which provides up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness for tens of millions of borrowers.

— South Carolina Supreme Court rules abortion protected under state constitution: The South Carolina Supreme Court today struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban , ruling the privacy rights in the state constitution protect abortion access. The 3-2 decision allows abortion to remain legal in the state until 20 weeks of pregnancy, and is a setback for Republican lawmakers who had hoped this year to ban abortion after conception.

AROUND THE WORLD

WEAPON RESUPPLY— The U.S. and Germany will send infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine , the two countries announced today, decisions that could pave the way for the West to give Ukraine what it really wants — Western tanks, writes Lara Seligman .

The White House announced that it plans to send Ukraine the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a tracked armored combat vehicle that carries a turret-mounted machine gun. Germany, meanwhile, will provide its Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The announcements come a day after France said it will send its AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicles, a highly mobile, wheeled system built around a powerful turret-mounted GIAT 105mm gun.

Berlin will also join the U.S. in donating a U.S.-made Patriot air defense battery, bringing Kyiv’s number of Patriots to two after the White House announced the move last month.

The move to send modern infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine could pave the way to supplying the more powerful Western tanks, something U.S. and European allies have so far been reluctant to do.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

36 Hours

The amount of time that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to observe a ceasefire in Ukraine due to Orthodox Christmas celebrations. The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, a close ally of Putin’s, made the request.

RADAR SWEEP

CANDID CAMERA— C-SPAN this week has been dealing with ratings that it’s not accustomed to, as people around the country tune in to vote after vote in the speakership race. For the first time, cameras operated independently on the House floor can capture all of the drama . Read about the lack of restrictions on C-SPAN cameras during this speaker vote and how it has changed coverage around the event, from Aaron W. Gordon in VICE.

PARTING WORDS

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) waits for the start of the 118th Congress in the House Chamber of the Capitol Building. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

LIAR’S POKER — One of the side spectacles of the GOP leadership mess on the House floor is Rep.-Elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), who seemingly fabricated much of his biography . You’ll find him sitting at the back of the chamber, as his new colleagues largely avert their eyes and keep their distance. It’s of particular professional note to Chris Hart and Drew Curtis, professors of psychology who have studied deceit and who wrote the book on pathological liars.

The Texas psychologists have watched Santos ascend to Congress with great interest — and not a little regret, as the honesty-challenged freshman congressman-elect burst on the scene just after they sent off the manuscript of their next book to their editors. The title? “Big Liars.”

Santos is indisputably a “Big Liar,” they say. But he may or may not be a pathological liar – at least in the way psychologists define it.

Curtis and Hart, authors of “Pathological Lying: Theory, Research and Practice,” explained in a joint Zoom conversation with Joanne Kenen , the Commonwealth Fund Journalist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, that a prolific liar isn’t necessarily a pathological liar, in the clinical sense. For a pathological liar, the cavalcade of untruths tends to impair functioning, cause distress, even pose a danger to themselves or others. It’s sometimes called compulsive or habitual lying.

That doesn’t mean Santos’s lying is normal. To the contrary, Santos’ torrent of lies may be a sign of another disorder, an anti-social personality.

An associate professor at Angelo State University, Curtis is a clinical psychologist who sees patients, and the clinician code of ethics precludes him from trying to diagnose strangers he’s seen on TV. Hart, a professor at Texas Woman’s University, is an experimental and research psychologist with no similar ethical bar. He can speculate.

Santos is not only a big liar, “he’s a bigger liar than I’ve ever met personally,” observed Hart, which is saying a lot as he has devoted his professional life to studying such specimens of mendacity.

Lying is part of human nature. We all fib — but only sometimes. But most people are fundamentally honest, the two scholars explained. “Everyone lies and everyone doesn’t want to be lied to,” said Hart. A small subset of people are responsible for most of the lying — and that’s true across nations and cultures. “There’s a very skewed distribution (of lies), “said Hart. “Ten percent of the population does 50 percent of the lying.”

Santos appears to have told so many lies — or resume “embellishments,” as he calls them — that he doesn’t even seem to be able to keep them straight, tweeting for instance different stories about how, when and where his mother died. Although as Curtis pointed out, he should have been able to keep better track of some of his falsehoods. “You know if you went to college or not. Hopefully,” he said, referring to Santos’s retracted claims about his nonexistent degree from Baruch College .

Speculation, even professionally informed speculation, Hart reminded us, isn’t a diagnosis. From afar, psychologists can’t really be sure what’s going on in Santos’s head or heart, can’t really know how much strife he’s experiencing or the extent to which his relationships are damaged or destroyed.

But based on his public persona, there are indications that Santos does have an antisocial personality disorder. These people tend to lack empathy and remorse. They trod on the rights of others. They take risks. They break rules. They are aggressive, deceptive and manipulative.

And they tell a lot of lies.

Sometimes lies start small, grow bigger and then get out of control — which is known as the Hydra hypothesis, Curtis said. Sometimes people just take pleasure in getting away with elaborate lies. That, he said, is known as “duping delight” — and some accomplished liars get a kick of trying to fool their therapist.

But the bottom line is that Americans actually want their politicians to be honest – and most of them basically are. Think about George Washington, who “could not tell a lie.” Or “Honest Abe” Lincoln. It’s safe to say that’s not how George Santos will be remembered.

However his story unfolds, the two scholars are watching. “When you get out to the extremes,” said Hart, “things start getting more interesting.”