Congressman LeBoutillier (R-NY), back in the dayIt was strange when John LeBoutillier was elected to Congress on Long Island in 1980. He was nationally prominent young, antagonistic and brash right-wing Republican-- a Matt Gaetz of his day-- and he beat a liberal icon, Leslie Wolff, who had held the seat since 1964. He only lasted for one term and he's finally been-- in the words of Tip O'Neill, "housebroken." Yesterday he penned an OpEd for The Hill that was even meaner about Trump than he's for having been about Tip O'Neill. His premise is that Trump won't survive 2019. And he explains why in list form:
• The downward trajectory of every aspect of his tenure indicates we are headed for a spectacular political crash-and-burn-- and fairly soonThe Sound of Music by Nancy Ohanian• His increasingly erratic and angry behavior, his self-imposed isolation, his inability and refusal to listen to smart advisers that he hired, all are leading him to a precipice• Meanwhile, the global and U.S. economies are softening in great part because of the unnecessary and ill-conceived trade war he launched against Canada and our European allies; if he wanted to conduct a legitimate trade war against China, wouldn’t it have made more sense to have trading allies such as Canada and Europe with us, instead of making them our adversaries?• Consumer confidence is declining and the American economy will slow noticeably in 2019. A recession is right around the corner, heading into 2020• The volatility in the stock markets threatens to weaken Trump’s support among the GOP donor class, which will translate to GOP senators pulling away from Trump in short order• Legally, Trump is in peril from not only from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation but also from separate investigations being conducted by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York into Trump’s life and business dealings• Fox News hosts are beginning to question the Trump administration’s actions on air, showing cracks-- albeit, small cracks at the moment-- in Fox’s heretofore 100 percent fealty to Trump • These cracks will expand into chasms as news and entertainment mogul Rupert Murdoch calculates Trump’s prognosis and decides he doesn’t want his Fox News network to go down the drain with Trump • Fox recently lost several days in a row to MSNBC in the ratings race-- and Fox host Sean Hannity has lost 20 percent of his nightly audience since the midterm elections• Without Fox approving Trump’s agenda, his support will decline from the 40s into the upper 20s• The Mueller investigation will come to an end in 2019• Mueller will shock everyone with what he has discovered, and the result will be much worse for Trump than anyone has anticipated• Yes, Trump indeed knew about the now-infamous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting-- and he lied to the American people repeatedly about it• Trump lied on Air Force One when he concocted a phony statement about “adoptions,” because he knew the truth about the meeting• The Mueller investigation will unveil evidence of Trump putting himself out to the highest bidder in return for campaign help and financing: Russians, Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris-- there will be evidence that millions of foreign dollars illegally flowed into the Trump campaign coffers in 2016• In other words, Trump basically said, “I’m for sale”• We may learn the source of the $66 million of his own money that Trump donated to his campaign in 2016. Was it a foreign entity who gave him the money as, in effect, an illegal pass-through? • Now that he has removed Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Trump can do what he tried in 2018: He will remove our troops from South Korea• This is exactly what North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and China and Russia want us to do• Trump tried this last spring but Mattis and former chief of staff John Kelly talked him out of it; now, neither man remains to stop him• This will provoke a crisis the likes of which we have never seen• The GOP Senate will go nuts when this happens, as will the Pentagon and Japan• This action may begin the breaking away of the 20 GOP senators it will take to remove Trump if the House impeaches, dooming the Trump presidency
More information on Monsieur LeBoutillier? For context. This is from Life, a popular magazine back when he was in Congress:
At 28, John LeBoutillier (pronounce luhBOOT‑lee‑ay) is the youngest member of the 97th Congress, and, some would say, the freshest. Representing New York's 6th District, on Long Island, he is unabashedly conservative in his views, but decidedly not conservative in the way he expresses them. He has called Jimmy Carter "a complete birdbrain" and Alexander Haig "a second‑class politician." About Congress he wonders: "You have to ask yourself what goes on here. It's a joke." The House Foreign Affairs Committee is "a snake pit." Reagan's Cabinet is "boring." And Senator Charles Percy he characterized as "a living disaster with almost no redeeming features."His biggest target to date has been Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, who, in LeBoutillier's words, "personifies everything about politics that the public hates today." He stepped up the assault with a halfhearted campaign to unseat the Speaker, which he has dubbed Repeal O'Neill-‑"I designed the button myself." But the fireworks really began this July, when LeBoutillier opened a speech with the analogy, "Tip O'Neill and the federal government are the same: they're both big, fat and out of control."In his political judgments, he is equally up front. A loyal Reaganite and a team player on most issues, he differs in priorities and passions, particularly on the Middle East: "Yasser Arafat is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler"; on Awacs: "Never-‑what happens if the Saudi government falls and is replaced by the Ayatullah's half brother?"; on crime: "I'm in favor of criminal control-‑you know, throw them in the slammer and leave them there"; on ERA: "To tear the country apart on a stupid amendment is just plain crazy." Reactions to Congress's new Bad Boy Puck have ranged from bemusement to official opprobrium. "I told him to tone 'em down. Don't be ad hominem," counseled congressman and mentor Jack Kemp. The Vice‑President's wife, Barbara Bush, was willing to forgive-‑on one condition. "She said she'd invite me to dinner if I stopped calling Percy a wimp," LeBoutillier says. "I don't know what a wimp is," replied the senator with a straight face. But Congressman Toby Moffett of Connecticut censured the freshman for his remark about O'Neill, calling it a "scurrilous attack" from the floor of the House. And the National Committee for an Effective Congress sent out a fund‑raiser packet featuring a photograph of LeBoutillier with a large X across his face.LeBoutillier himself seems to care only that his name is spelled correctly. When Tip O'Neill countered the freshman congressman's "big, fat and out of control" remark by asking, "LeBoutillier‑-isn't he that young pup from New York who needs housebreaking?" LeBoutillier's staff spread newspapers on his office floor, and their boss enjoyed the joke more than anyone. Certainly he shows no sign of curbing his tongue. When two lobbyists representing the domestic sugar industry recently came to woo him on a busy morning, one mentioned a golf partner of LeBoutillier's father. "My father died playing golf," the congressman said as they settled onto the couch. "He bogeyed a par 5, picked up the ball, said 'Oh, s‑‑‑,' and dropped dead. It was a short meeting.Born into social position and wealth, John LeBoutillier had a mannered upbringing. His father, Thomas LeBoutillier, a scion of a prominent Long Island family, worked as a test pilot for Grumman, not far from the family residence in Westbury. He married into a family of equal prominence-‑the Whitneys. Although young John remembers little discussion of politics at the dinner table, a legacy of public service and public exposure loomed large: his great‑great‑grandfather was William C. Whitney, Secretary of the Navy under Grover Cleveland; his grandmother's cousin, John Hay Whitney, was ambassador to Great Britain under Eisenhower; and another of her cousins, Joan Whitney Payson, owned the Mets.LeBoutillier picked up the nickname Boot at Brooks School in Massachusetts, where he was captain of the soccer team. Not until he advanced to Harvard did he encounter the liberal foe. Comparatively ascetic and politically right of center, LeBoutillier remembers sitting in a room as a freshman with other Harvard Young Republicans discussing whom to support for President, Nixon or McGovern. "They chose McGovern," he says, still disbelieving. "I should have known then what was in store."His growing commitment to conservatism found an outlet in the campaign of ex‑POW Leo Thorsness against George McGovern. LeBoutillier raised the remarkable sum of $250,000 from his room in Cambridge. It was a beginning of sorts for the 20‑year‑old. "From '74, there was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to run ... and win."If the Thorsness campaign was his political initiation, Harvard Hates America was his bid for the political arena. When it appeared in 1978, attacking the trend of liberal thought and lifestyles among Harvard students and faculty, Newsweek magazine predicted the conservatives had "a new enfant terrible." The book aroused the interest of such established conservatives as Justin Dart and William Simon, both of whom became eventual supporters of LeBoutillier's congressional campaign.Among his peers, he engendered little sympathy. He berated the radical chic he found so prevalent at Harvard: "It was the social thing to do. Join the crowd; blow some dope and attack America." LeBoutillier's idea of a college study break was a trip to Bailey's ice‑cream parlor, where he and a friend would meet every day in the spring of their senior year to have a milkshake and commiserate. A faculty member mentions one other quirk, besides LeBoutillier's anomalous ideology. "He was a most eccentric dresser, showing up in remarkable outfits: a purple shirt, red pants and a green tie."At his commencement, a time for identifying goals, LeBoutillier set three for himself: getting into Congress, reuniting the Beatles and running a major league baseball team. Five years later, one has been achieved, one has been rendered moot and one remains a dream."Harvard and Congress are just the same: the hardest part is getting in," says LeBoutillier, sitting at his desk in Washington, feet propped on its edge, stringing together paper clips. His head, upper torso, knees and half the bottoms of his feet are framed by a single high window with light‑blue drapes bearing the congressional seal in pale yellow. The Capitol dome hovers in the distance. On his desk, amid papers, files and two copies of his book, is a model of the Navy's airborne early‑warning aircraft‑-a miniature of the one he flew in recently at the Grumman testing airfield in his district. The requisite pictures (LeBoutillier with Reagan, at the podium, and in a Yankees uniform) and awards (the Young Republicans, the Nassau county GOP) are clustered on one wall. On the other, above a couch, is a Japanese assault rifle, captured by LeBoutillier's uncle in WWII, and a photograph of the U.S.S. Yorktown, his ship. A television is tuned to the action on the floor of the House."It's kind of like a dorm around here," he continues. "You're all on the same hall or right above each other. You can just go down and start talking to someone. I've been working on converting a Democratic congressman since April. I talk to him almost every day. Had him down to the White House yesterday and got him this close to switching." With a thumb and forefinger, he measures an inch and a half. "I'll be very proud if l can get it to happen."He exhales lightly, like a swimmer clearing his nose. "What appeals to the press and the public is the thought of this young, angry guy in Washington, wailing away at the Establishment." He lets his feet fall to the floor and the chair springs him upright. "Well, I do wail away at the Establishment. But I'm not particularly angry about it."The public has come around to the fact that the liberals have failed miserably at running the country, and it's not because they didn't mean well; it's just that they were inept. Their policies have brought us to the brink of disaster. People are screaming about interest rates, inflation-‑things that were done before any of us young Republicans were born," he says as he links the paper clips together into a ring, a small circle of metal, and holds it up, as if looking for a weakness. "And we're going to spend the rest of our lives undoing it."LeBoutillier won his seat last November in a surprise victory over Democratic incumbent Lester Wolff. Campaign costs ran high--$429,040‑mostly for expensive New York metropolitan area television time. In the last two weeks LeBoutillier pumped in $227,800 of his own money* to pay for more air time for commercials that focused on Wolff’s reputation as a junketeer. Even so, LeBoutillier was slated to lose so convincingly that his own party was looking ahead to another try. "Two weeks before my election I couldn't have paid this many people to come hear me talk," LeBoutillier recently joked to a gathering of 70 State Department staff members during an address at the Secretary's Forum. "Even my mother said I'd never win."
* Long after Life had published this piece, LeBoutillier and his mother were fined by the Federal Election Commission for campaign finance violations. That $227,800 in last minute TV ads was given to him by his mother expressly for the TV ad campaign, which was $226,800 more than the then-legal limit.
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