POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
At a House committee hearing on “The Need for Leadership to Combat Climate Change and Protect National Security,” Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was questioning former Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is regarded as an expert on climate change who helped to develop the Paris climate accord. He has criticized President Trump for proposing to set up a task force whose purpose is to counter the scientific consensus on climate change. In contrast to Kerry, Massie has described those who believe in climate action as “alarmists” and has described carbon dioxide and other the greenhouse gasses as “plant food.” So, it is not at all surprising that an exchange between Kerry and Massie would become contentious.
But what did occur was a surprise to just about everyone—and to Kerry as much as anyone.
This is the transcript of the exchange between Massie and Kerry:
Massie: Sec. Kerry, I want to read part of your statement back to you: “Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the educated adults he once trusted his top national security positions.” It sounds like you’re questioning the credentials of the president’s advisers, currently. But I think we should question your credentials today. Isn’t it true you have a science degree from Yale?
Kerry: Bachelor of arts degree.
Massie: Is it a political science degree?
Kerry: Yes, political science.
Massie: So how do you get a bachelor of arts, in a science?
Kerry: Well it’s a liberal arts education and degree. It’s a bachelor…
Massie: OK. So it’s not really science. So I think it’s somewhat appropriate that someone with a pseudo-science degree is here pushing pseudo-science in front of our committee today.
Kerry: Are you serious?! I mean this is really a serious happening here? [Note that Kerry is so discombobulated that he momentarily becomes incoherent.]
Massie: You know what? It is serious. You’re calling the president’s Cabinet a “kangaroo court.” Is that serious?
Kerry: I’m not calling his Cabinet a kangaroo court. I’m calling this committee that he’s putting together a kangaroo committee.
Massie: Are you saying it doesn’t have educated adults now?
Kerry: I don’t know who it has yet because it’s secret.
Massie: Well, you said it in your testimony.
Kerry: Why would he have to have a secret analysis of climate change?
Massie: Let’s get back to the science of it.
Kerry: But it’s not science, you’re not quoting science!
Massie: Well, You’re the science expert. You have the political science degree.
Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson described Massie’s part of the exchange as an “impossibly daft line of questioning” and added this observation: “Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) may have studied robotics at MIT, but he is now responsible for one of the most asinine moments in congressional history.”
Massie is, indeed, well-educated. What follows is an excerpt on his educational background from the Wikipedia entry on him:
He earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thomas participated in the MIT Solar Car Club, which took second place behind a Swiss team in the Solar and Electric 500 at the Phoenix Raceway in Phoenix, AZ, in 1991. At the time, the team set several world records including a lap speed in excess of 62 mph (99 kmph), and straight-away speeds in excess of 70 mph (112 kmph).
In 1992, Massie won MIT’s then-named 2.70 (“Introduction to Design and Manufacturing”, now named 2.007) Design Competition. It is rare that a non-Mechanical Engineering student wins this contest. MIT professor Woodie Flowers, who pioneered the 2.70 contest, mentioned that Massie watched this contest on television in seventh grade and wanted to come to MIT to win this contest.
In 1993, at MIT, he and his wife started a company called SensAble Devices Inc. Massie completed his Bachelor’s degree in the same year and wrote his Bachelor’s thesis “Design of a three degree of Freedom force-reflecting haptic interface.” Massie was the winner in 1995 of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventors, and the $10,000 David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Grand Prize in the sixth annual MIT $10K Entrepreneurial Business Plan Competition. The company was re-incorporated as SensAble Technologies, Inc., in 1996 after partner Bill Aulet joined the company. They raised $32 million of venture capital, had 24 different patents, and 70 other employees.
Also in 1996, Massie completed his Master’s degree (SM) and his master’s thesis was titled “Initial Haptic Explorations with the Phantom: Virtual Touch through Point Interaction.”
Massie sold the company, and he and his wife moved back to their hometown in Lewis County. They raised their children on a farm, where he built his own off-the-grid timberframe house.
So, what is the deal with the way in which Massie questioned Kerry? Was he attempting simply to challenge Kerry’s credentials as an “expert” on climate science and botched it? If that was the whole point, then perhaps he should have taken an extra course or two on oral communication skills and perhaps on persuasion and logic as well.
But I think that there is something more at work here. I have done several posts on some of the ridiculous things that Louis Gohmert has said, and Louis Gohmert is—astonishingly–also very well-educated. It may be that when smart people defend stupid ideas for entirely ideological reasons, their intelligence actually works against them. It’s as if their brains are at odds with their mouths–as if they can’t quite bring themselves to express an obviously stupid point straightforwardly.
Whether Progressives are “flipping the script” and turning the Right’s tactics back on them or they are simply becoming guilty of the same sort of self-reinforcing, partisan talking point has become a question that more and more talking heads are latching onto ahead of the 2020 election. (This is an issue distinct from but certainly related to whether castigating Trump voters for their lack of intelligence is preventing them from even considering voting for a Democratic candidate.)
While I know that cable news and digital media have sped up the spin cycle considerably, the Far Right has indulged in this sort of thing for 40 to 50 years. Surely Progressives get more than two or three years to indulge in it. When someone such as Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg comes off in the way that Massie does in this instance, then Progressives can start to second-guess themselves on this tactic.
