Whitmire: Donât blame Tuberville for losing Space Command
This is an opinion column.
Don’t blame Tommy Tuberville for Alabama losing Space Command to Colorado.
Alabama’s senior senator has done some dumb, racist stuff lately, but Tuberville had nothing to do with this. Nothing is what he’s good at. Tuberville is no more capable of affecting this decision than he is to control the weather.
Instead, Blame Donald Trump.
And then blame Joe Biden.
On Monday, NBC News published a story that had been rumored for nearly a week before it dropped. The Biden Administration will soon announce that it will keep the Space Command in Colorado, the outlet reported, not Huntsville, which has prevailed in a years-long competition.
The NBC News piece mussed Tuberville’s hair without hanging all responsibility around the senator’s neck.
Instead, it said, the deciding issue for the White House was Alabama’s anti-abortion law.
“Administration officials said the push not to headquarter Spacecom in Huntsville has nothing to do with Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blocking of at least 234 of Biden’s military nominations in protest against the Pentagon’s abortion policy,” NBC reported. “Still, one official said, ‘He’s not helping.’”
But let’s be clear. There’s a much more plausible explanation. Alabama is a bright red Republican state. Colorado is a blue, Democratic state with purplish tendencies. The Biden Administration has every political reason to give Space Command to Colorado. It has nothing to lose by taking it from Alabama.
The Biden administration has been looking for a way to reverse this decision since day one.
But it was Trump who opened the way when he opened his mouth.
“Space Force — I sent to Alabama,” Trump said on the Rick & Bubba Show in 2021. “I hope you know that. (They) said they were looking for a home and I single-handedly said let’s go to Alabama. They wanted it. I said let’s go to Alabama. I love Alabama.”
A sharper interviewer might have salvaged things with a follow-up question or two: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but are you saying that the site-selection process was political and the criteria meaningless? Did Alabama win on its merits or your whim?”
Alas, Rick & Bubba controlled the mic, not Walter Cronkite.
But here’s the thing. There’s little evidence, at least in the public record, to support what Trump said. To the contrary, the Department of Defense made a big to-do about how careful and deliberate it had been. The General Accounting Office said the process lacked transparency, but that was about it.
There’s no smoking gun except Trump flapping his gums.
But that’s all the folks in Colorado needed to claim the game was rigged.
And that’s apparently all the Biden Administration needs to reverse the decision.
Folks who’ve spent the last six years telling us that Trump lies about everything would have us believe that, in this one instance, he was telling the truth.
Now we all get to eat a greasy food court pretzel of irony: By running his mouth, Trump gave Biden license to do the very thing Trump claimed to have done but probably didn’t.
Irony isn’t the same thing as justice, though, and two wrongs do not make a right. There’s no more — maybe less — reason for Americans to trust Biden’s decision than the one he’s likely to overturn.
Even if the Defense Department’s site-selection process was politicized by Trump, the answer isn’t another political decision. The answer is to start over.
I don’t know if Huntsville is the best site for Space Command. I don’t know that Colorado Springs isn’t.
Neither do any of the Alabama politicians griping on Twitter or the Colorado officials griping for years and now cheering the possible reversal.
But what I do know is that this whole thing stinks. There’s a lot more of America at stake here than just two states, including four other states that were also finalists in this process.
If we keep reversing this decision every time someone new moves into the White House, the thing might never happen.
The only right answer is to start over.
And keep the politics out of it next time.
Note: A reader pointed out that I mistakenly referred to Tuberville as Alabama’s “junior senator.” He has been there slightly longer than Sen. Katie Britt who — despite having judgment, experience, maturity and political aptitude — is still the junior senator from Alabama. I’ve corrected the mistake.
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