The bizarre new politics of pets

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Sep 24, 2024 View in browser
 
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By Michael Schaffer

Presented by Citi

President of the Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts address delegates.

President of the Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts address delegates during the second day of the National Conservatism Conference on May 16, 2023 in London. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

DOG DAYS — Another week, another gruesome political headline about pets.

This time, the focus is on Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 mastermind, who allegedly bragged to colleagues and dinner guests that he had used a shovel to kill a noisy neighborhood dog that was keeping his baby awake. Roberts has flatly denied the claims, which appeared today in the Guardian.

That’s more than you can say for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another popular figure on the far right. In May, Noem was at the center of a media storm after publishing a memoir where she proudly describes leading her own wirehaired pointer to a gravel pit and shooting her to death after the dog ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens.

These pet headlines, of course, bookended a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump and JD Vance’s unfounded claims that Haitian migrants have been killing and eating people’s dogs and cats. In that case, the MAGA pols appear to be of the view that killing innocent pooches is bad. Given Trump’s well-documented disdain for dogs, though, you could understand if some people are confused.

In fact, if you look back at how American politicians have talked about pets for the last century or two, the whole series of outrages seems especially bizarre. Dogs, in particular, turn out to be a fascinating prism for understanding the culture of politics. And, these days, they’re a pretty clear indication of how that culture is changing: Political pets were the ultimate symbol of relatability in a culture that valued unity. And now they’re another dystopian motif in an age that has elevated conflict.

In ancient times, leaders kept pets, too. But in those days, house pets were how potentates elevated themselves above the masses: Our ruler is so rich and powerful, the logic went, that he can afford to feed and care for an animal with no economic utility whatsoever.

In China, the Han emperor Ling had his dogs sleep on ornate carpets and gave them personal bodyguards. In Britain, Mary, Queen of Scots outfitted her lapdogs in blue velvet suits. In an age when people could barely feed themselves — much less support an animal that wasn’t there to work or be eaten — the tales of pet largesse only served to make the sovereign seem even more exotic and fearsome.

In America, too, up through the Gilded Age, pets became a way for the wealthy to show off their status. Thorstein Veblen, the sociologist who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” took note of this in his 1899 magnum opus Theory of the Leisure Class: “As he is an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men’s regard as a thing of good repute.”

But things shifted dramatically in the more democratic middle-class U.S. society of the 20th century. Instead of being a way for pols to show off their might, pets became a way for the most powerful person in the country to play at being an everyman. Sure, Franklin Roosevelt may have been a patrician who radically expanded the federal government during the Great Depression, but when he talked about his beloved Scottie, Fala, he was just another guy who loved his pooch.

And on it went, up through Barack Obama, who announced plans to get a dog soon after his improbable victory. Just like that, a political phenom about to enter the world’s least relatable residence was just another middle-class dad hoping his kids would walk the dog like they’d promised.

Four years later, Obama was helped to reelection because his opponent, Mitt Romney, had previously been caught in a mini-scandal of his own. It involved reports that, in the name of fitting everyone into the station wagon for a trip to Canada, Romney had once put the family Irish Setter in a crate atop the car, much to the animal’s distress. Ironically, the family anecdote that spurred the news cycle had been meant to show the fantastically wealthy candidate was himself also just a vacation-planning regular dad.

It didn’t matter: Romney was pilloried over the anecdote, including from fellow conservatives like rival candidate Newt Gingrich and TV host Tucker Carlson. “I’m feeling that maybe Mitt Romney lost my vote here,” Carlson said on his MSNBC show after the story first broke.

Would a conservative pol’s hard-hearted canine treatment generate the same criticism today, in a movement whose leader is fond of adding “like a dog” to statements about people being fired, killed, or dumped? Perhaps not. And I think it indicates that something has changed in the way people think about politics, not just pets.

Where political pets once went from making a leader look exotic to making a candidate seem relatable, we’ve entered an era where seeming relatable is no longer always a priority. Instead, particularly on the MAGA right, the priority is on seeming willing to bust taboos — or to fight for old taboos that you’re accusing the smart set of abandoning. The headlines involving pets in American politics this summer are contradictory, but the common denominator is one in which the family pooch becomes not a symbol of American domestic bliss, but as a battlefield of embattled social rules.

In the case of Noem’s book, she uses the tale of her pet-killing as an example of the sort of tough decisions she had to make as a farmer, the sorts of decisions namby-pamby blue-state progressives presumably don’t understand. Being willing to gun down a dog, in this frame, is a sign of courage, of rising above the weak-willed elite. That appears to have been the moral of Roberts’ story, too.

Helping Noem’s narrative, if not her post-publication PR challenges, is the fact that she was able to set her story against a brilliant example of weak-willed elite: Joe Biden, who brought dogs back to the White House after the canine-free Trump presidency. Biden’s ill-trained dogs proceeded to maul numerous staffers with little immediate consequence. Noem said she’d never have put up with that misbehavior.

The Springfield story also deploys dogs as a battle cry — in this case, from the other direction. In the discredited telling of Vance (himself a professed dog lover), Haitians were stealing and eating people’s pets. Eating dogs or cats, of course, is another American taboo. But this time, it was a taboo that he implied he would stand up for even as immigrant-coddling progressives allegedly looked the other way. It’s dystopia, not the American dream.

It’s worth noting that the bizarre pet tales of 2024 politics haven’t really worked out for whoever’s telling them. Noem’s dog-killing story may have killed her vice presidential hopes. Trump’s “they’re eating the pets” spurred viral mockery. Americans, it seems, still want pets to be a happy, shared subject of devotion. It’s not clear whether this is something their political class can deliver.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at mschaffer@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @michaelschaffer.

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What'd I Miss?

— House Republicans pivot to fast-tracking funding bill amid conservative opposition: House GOP leaders are switching up their strategy for passing a stopgap funding patch to head off a government shutdown, after conservative opposition threatened to block floor debate. A funding lapse remains unlikely, since the compromise spending bill is still expected to pass the House and Senate with bipartisan support before federal funding expires at midnight Monday. But the House’s pivot on the first procedural step is another hiccup in Speaker Mike Johnson’s weekslong effort to balance centrist calls for averting a pre-election shutdown with former President Donald Trump’s support for a funding standoff over noncitizen voting restrictions. House Republican leaders now plan to “suspend the rules” for passing the bill midweek, shrinking debate to 40 minutes and requiring a two-thirds threshold for passage. This comes as conservative lawmakers were threatening to oppose teeing up debate.

— House GOP moves toward holding Blinken in contempt of Congress: House Republicans moved today to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress over claims he obstructed their investigation into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) had subpoenaed Blinken, requiring him to testify today. But the secretary of state responded he’d be in New York for events surrounding the U.N. General Assembly. Blinken reiterated “I am willing to testify” but said he is “profoundly disappointed” by the committee’s insistence on unilateral dates “during which I am carrying out the President’s important foreign policy objectives.”

— Biden DOJ slaps Visa with antitrust suit over debit card dominance: The Justice Department today sued Visa, accusing the payments giant of illegally monopolizing the U.S. market for debit cards, stomping out rivals and inflating fees that are passed along to consumers. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Visa has leveraged its debit card market dominance to “thwart the growth of its existing competitors and prevent others from developing new and innovative alternatives,” according to a DOJ statement.

Nightly Road to 2024

POLITICAL AMMO — Nine House Republicans are demanding information on U.S. taxpayer funds spent on security and support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania over the weekend — clearly irked that the visit seemed to benefit Democrats in a swing state. “If taxpayer dollars were used to facilitate this visit in a way that may violate federal laws or ethical guidelines, it is essential that Congress and the public receive a full accounting of those expenditures and the motivations behind the visit,” the lawmakers, led by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), wrote in a letter released today.

TRUMP’S ECON PLAN — Former President Donald Trump promised today that if elected,the U.S. will “take other countries’ jobs,” laying out a plan for a “manufacturing renaissance” by offering “the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs [and] the lowest regulatory burden” to companies that manufacture products in the U.S. Speaking to a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, Trump previewed a sprawling manufacturing overhaul including special federal zones with “ultra low taxes and regulations,” a “manufacturing ambassador” tasked with convincing major manufacturers to move to America, and massive deregulation — all aimed at “relocating entire industries” into the U.S.

Trump promised a 15 percent “made in America tax rate” and said he would implement 100 percent tariffs on cars manufactured in Mexico, amplifying the protectionist policies on which he has run for nearly a decade.

DASHED — Republicans’ effort to change Nebraska’s unique electoral vote system ahead of the November election to benefit former President Donald Trump has been dashed. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, a major proponent of making Nebraska a winner-takes-all state, said today that he has “no plans to call a special session on this issue prior to the 2024 election” because he couldn’t secure the 33 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, should the change be put before the legislature.

AT FILIBUSTER’S END — Kamala Harris is calling for changes to Senate procedure to pass federal legislation protecting abortion rights. Harris voiced support for ending the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation in the Senate, commonly known as the filibuster, during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio that aired today.

WALZ PREPS — Gov. Tim Walz is planning another stint of debate prep today in Minneapolis with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg along to play Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio.), just days before Vance and Walz face off in what may be the final debate before November. Walz and Buttigieg will meet this afternoon in Minneapolis, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss it. Walz is also holding a campaign fundraiser in the Minneapolis area today.

AROUND THE WORLD

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a press conference during the NATO Summit in Vilnius.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a press conference during the NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 12, 2023. | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

ERDOGAN ON NETANYAHU — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler today, urging that he be stopped.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must also be stopped by the alliance of humanity,” Erdoğan said during his speech at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. The Turkish president criticized the U.N. for failing to fulfill its original mission and instead becoming “a dysfunctional structure.”

Speaking just after President Joe Biden, Erdoğan also criticized U.S. policy in the region. “Those who are supposedly working for a ceasefire from this stage continue to send arms and ammunition to Israel so it can continue its massacres,” he said.

RED TAPE PIVOT — For decades, the European Union loved to regulate. Now, it wants to do the opposite.

Where once, the “Brussels Effect” saw the EU set laws and standards the rest of the world couldn’t help but follow, soon there will be a European commissioner for slashing red tape. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s latest top job appointments signal she wants to pivot away from the bloc’s traditional focus on market rules, to focus on reviving the EU’s lackluster economic growth instead. The thinking is that the former might impede the latter.

At top levels of the EU, there’s recognition that being a first-mover regulator doesn’t necessarily translate into being a good one. This is most obvious in the digital sphere where rules like the Digital Services Act and the AI Act are seen as not having helped — and perhaps actively hindered — the development of Europe’s comparatively stunted digital economy.

 

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Nightly Number

About 40,000

The number of U.S. troops now stationed in the Middle East, after an aircraft carrier, two Navy destroyers and a cruiser set sail from Norfolk, Virginia in response to a spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

RADAR SWEEP

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS — A reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the scariest potential nuclear disaster in American history, is prepping to go back online. By 2028, the hope is that reactor one will be able to supply significant energy to Microsoft — a company that really needs it. The AI boom is creating the need for significantly more energy than the U.S. power grid is currently supplying, and companies are starting to plan ahead; many big tech firms are turning to nuclear power to fill that gap. Could an AI boom lead to a nuclear power boom? Matt Reynolds investigates for WIRED.

Parting Image

On this date in 1985: President Ronald Reagan meets President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Oval Office. Mubarak called on President Reagan to help get peace talks moving in the Middle East.

On this date in 1985: President Ronald Reagan meets President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Oval Office. Mubarak called on President Reagan to help get peace talks moving in the Middle East. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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How will digital currencies shape the future of finance?

As blockchain technology advances, digital currencies are poised to disrupt traditional banking models and could redefine the global monetary landscape – presenting both challenges and opportunities for businesses.

Blockchain-based products can make a significant impact in terms of wide consumer adoption in digital currency, especially central bank digital currency (CBDCs), gaming, and social. Momentum on adoption has positively shifted as governments, large institutions, and corporations have moved from investigating the benefits of tokenization to trials and proofs of concept.

Explore in-depth analysis from Citi on the potential implications in the Citi GPS Report, Money, Tokens, and Games.

 
 

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