Colleen Shogan, The nominee from President Biden to lead the National Archives and Records Administration, has found themselves in the crosshairs of Missouri GOP Senator Josh Hawley who highlighted that she had written a piece that he claimed overtly disparaged every two-term Republican president going all the way back to World War II.
The questioning from Hawley kicked off as part of a Wednesday Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.
“You have talked in today’s hearings so far and in your pre-hearing Q&A about how much it’s important to be a non-partisan leader, correct?” stated Hawley. “And so if you’re confirmed, you will attempt to stay politically neutral in your decision making, is that fair to say?”
Shogan assented.
Hawley then pointed to an article that was authored by Shogan titled, “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: Republican Populism.” In the article, which was written back in 2007 and officially published by the American Political Science Association, Shogan talked about Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, saying that their ” leadership posturing place them on the explicitly anti-intellectual side of the spectrum.”
“Do you consider this piece to be non-partisan?” posted Hawley.
“I consider it to be an academic article publication 16, 17 years ago, a scholarly piece,” she stated.
Hawley highlighted that Shogan had stated that the more modern GOP presidents had taken on a posture of anti-intellectualism and questioned just how to define such a phrase.
“The ability so speak in very plain, common-sense terms to Americans,” answered Shogan.
As part of the article, she expressed, “Republicans tend to exhibit anti-intellectual qualities. Democrats coalesce on the intellectual tail of the continuum.”
While speaking about this, Hawley asked, “So is your point that Republicans are stupid and Democrats are intellectual?”
Shogan made the argument that she did not mean that at all, but then followed up by claiming that the set of three GOP presidents had a “rhetorical connection with the American people.”
“A rhetorical connection that you say is anti-intellectual and you feature every two term Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower,” expressed Hawley. “It’s a piece on rhetoric, but you attribute part of the ‘anti-intellectualism’ of the Republican party, to in your words, to the rise of the religious Right. Because those voters are stupid?”
She expressed wholesale disagreement with that particular characterization.
“You wrote an article saying basically that Republican voters are stupid, that Republican presidents deliberately appeal to anti-intellectualism,” Hawley spotlighted out of anger. “You roll it all up in this thing called Republican populism, yet you’re trying to present yourself here as a non-partisan. In fact, you’re an extreme partisan. … You’re someone who has denigrated Republican presidents; every two-term Republican president … since the Second World War and their voters.”
Hawley explained the extreme importance of the apparent partisan bias being exhibited by Shogan, obliquely making reference to the FBI raid carried out against former President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home.
“This is not just a theoretical set of questions, because as you know, we have seen what happens when you have political activists in a position that you are up for confirmation for. And we are living through that as a nation right now,” he stated.
“We are living through the weaponization, the political weaponization of the National Archives; the political weaponization of the Department of Justice; the political weaponization of the FBI, such that half of the people of this country cannot trust those institutions,” he went on. “We’re living with a president who calls half the voters of this county semi-fascists, who has said they are a threat to democracy.”
“How can you assure them that you will be truly non-partisan given what you have said?” concluded Hawley.
