Why Is Michael Gove Supporting Kamala Harris?
Michael Gove, the new editor of the London Spectator and former Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, has waded into American electoral waters in an interview with the BBC. Queried about whom he would support were he an Americanized, Gove briskly replied, “I would follow Dick Cheney’s advice and I would vote for Kamala Harris.” Gove’s invocation of Cheney the Elder might suggest that he is flirting with the NeverTrump movement. Still, Gove was quick to note that he was not one of those seeking to “demonize” Trump, who boasted some genuine accomplishments from his term as president. Gove said it was simply a matter of character. He doesn’t like the cut of his jib.
Gove was not the only Spectator writer to voice his conviction that Trump should not be reelected. Somewhat more colorfully, Andrew Sullivan asked in the magazine’s October 5 issue, “Why did I find myself writing an endorsement of Kamala Harris last week only to be immediately beset by a case of sudden-onset nausea?” Why indeed. Needless to say, this spate of endorsements comes as something of a jolt to anyone who, like me, has faithfully read and occasionally contributed to this venerable conservative publication.
Gove is undoubtedly aware that his backing Trump would not stir up the same attention, but his reservations struck me as cogent and sincere. But suppose the magazine’s redoubtable deputy editor, Freddy Gray, whom I’ve always enjoyed sparring with on his “Americano” podcast, disavows Trump. In that case, I’ll know something is truly amiss across the pond. For now, it’s good to know that I have an ideological comrade in Gove and that my status as a lonely dissenter at The Spectator may be coming to a terminus.
As Trump stirs up apprehensions among the chattering classes, he remains a strong candidate. The real mystery remains his hold on a healthy slice of the electorate. Little seems to dent it, including his calls to purge “the enemy within” and the DJ session in Pennsylvania, where he swayed silently for forty minutes.
His campaign oscillates between the goofy and the ominous. On Sunday, he headed to Bucks County, PA, to work at the fryer to underscore his assertion that Kamala Harris had never worked at McDonald’s. On October 27, he’s planning a rally at Madison Square Garden that his critics are likening to the German-American Bund rally on behalf of Nazism that took place in February 1939. Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal deemed it part “Nazi cosplay” and part salve for his wounded ego.
Either way, Trump will have more to brood about after new documents detailing his maleficent role in the events of January 6 are revealed on Friday. Judge Tanya Chutkan has dismissed his specious claims—to call them arguments would be to insult the profession of advocacy—that the evidence submitted by the government should not be made public until after the election. Au contraire, said Chutkan. It would constitute a form of election interference to suppress the documents. Given Trump’s palpable eagerness to keep them under wraps, they hardly seem likely to conduce a reevaluation of what Gove and others recoil from as a dubious character or, to borrow from Trump’s more vivid vocabulary, a bad hombre.
Jacob Heilbrunn is Editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel.
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