Tom Cotton is a rising Republican star, now being mentioned as a 2020 possibility, or even a Trump alternative if, as some (i.e., me) speculate, Trump Withdraws from the Race. He was the instigator of the infamous, bordering on treasonous, letter to Iran telling them not to trust America’s word on the Iran nuclear deal.
But Cotton is not only a major league despicable Senator and person, he is also a petty, vindictive one, as I just learned reading An Obama Nominee's Crushed Hopes a Times op-ed piece by Frank Bruni.
I’m not a great fan of Bruni’s, dating back to his coverage of W. Bush in 2000. But this piece reveals Cotton’s true nature in a tragic case. Cassandra Butts was a lifetime public servant and a law school classmate of the President’s. He nominated her for Ambassador to the Bahamas.
Cotton put a hold on her nomination, along with Ambassadorships to Norway and Sweden, over gripes about alleged leaks, completely unrelated to Butts. Cotton’s office said he “had enormous respect for her and her career” and her qualifications were impeccable. Yet Cotton held her up for over 800 days, even after releasing the other holds. Why? Bruni writes:
She told me that she once went to see him about it, and he explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s — the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates — and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.
On May 25, Butts died after waiting futilely for 835 days for confirmation. “She had acute leukemia, but didn’t know it and hadn’t felt ill until just beforehand.” At that point, “the Bahamas had gone without an ambassador for 1,647 days.”
Rising star, indeed.