Macho men

Daniel Desrochers

Kansas state Rep. Stephen Johnson is a Republican running for state treasurer in Kansas. This week, his campaign put out an ad that featured an explosion in the background, calling him a “taxpayer super ninja.”

“My consultants said I needed some exciting ads,” Johnson says in the ad. “Well here’s some real exciting stuff I’ve done.”

The ad is a wry swipe at some of the stuff being aired around the country, and particularly across the river in Missouri, where it feels like it’s only a matter of time before the candidates replace their campaign posters with pictures of John Wayne.

Take, for example, the ad Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt put out this week, in which he stood in a garage holding a blowtorch. Or former Gov. Eric Greitens recreating his gubernatorial ad where he shoots at explosives (this time he says he has an army, at which three people emerge from the grass wearing camouflage).

It’s not just the Republicans — Democrat Lucas Kunce has called himself a hand grenade just waiting to be thrown into the U.S. Capitol — or just the men — U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler sent out a mailer where she posed with an assault weapon.

Masculinity and politics have long been intertwined, particularly in our American mythology — how we have told the stories of our nation’s past. The aristocrats who founded the country (you know, the guys who wore wigs and corsets) have been lionized. We know Abraham Lincoln was a champion wrestler, that Andrew Jackson lived with a bullet lodged in his chest from a duel, that Teddy Roosevelt went exploring in the Amazon.

Last year, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, made a speech in which he claimed America’s masculinity is under attack from the “left.” He said there is a concerted effort to make traditional masculine virtues, which he defined as courage, independence and assertiveness, be perceived as a danger to society.

“The crisis of American men is a crisis for the American republic,“ Hawley said. “...It’s not only the depression and darkness that now shadow so many. It’s that liberty requires virtue. And in particular, it requires the manly virtues. America needs good men.”

Hawley’s speech is part of a larger backlash to a larger cultural moment that we saw through the 2010s — born of the Me Too movement — in which there was a push to re-examine what it means to be masculine, perhaps best encapsulated in a Super Bowl ad by Gillette that asked “is this the best a man can get?”

The performative masculinity oozing from the Senate race — a sweaty jockstrap of a contest over who holds the biggest gun that has already attracted national attention — appears to be a natural extension of Hawley’s complaint.

If “the left” is erasing America’s masculinity, then the Republican candidates are willing to use force to stop them from doing so. If Republicans are trying to paint the Democrats as insufficiently masculine, Lucas Kunce is willing to climb a 35-foot iron beam to prove them wrong.

But the performative toughness being displayed by the candidates is being to further the argument that America is in the midst of a battle for its soul (to echo Pat Buchanon). And if we’re sending warriors in the place of diplomats, is it any wonder Congress is gridlocked?

In the meantime, we’ll always have the Village People to show us the way.

More from Missouri

Greitens has never testified under oath to address abuse allegations made by his ex-wife and a woman with whom he had an affair (both made their allegations under oath). His lawyer is now trying to keep it that way, after Helen Wade, the attorney representing Sheena Greitens, scheduled a deposition as part of the couple’s custody battle.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

Two rural counties have been added to the 3rd Congressional District this year. The two-term Congresswoman is moving quickly to adapt to the new district while attempting to win over rural voters who tend to vote for Republicans.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

A former friend

Ken Harbaugh, a retired Navy Pilot who studied at Duke with Greitens, co-founded the Mission Continues with him and attended both of his weddings, called on his old friend to drop out of the U.S. Senate race.

Harbaugh, who ran for the U.S. House as a Democrat in Ohio and lost in 2018, said he took out a loan to donate to Greitens’ first campaign and that his mother personally wrote Greitens a letter after he resigned from office.

“Eric, I want you to know there are worse things in life than running for office honorably and losing,” Harbaugh said. “What you’re doing now is not honorable and it is not a reflection of the Eric I know. Even if you do win, you’re going to lose more than you imagine by campaigning like this.”

One of the things Harbaugh brought up? Greitens’ past support for former President Barack Obama, which is a line some of the Republican candidates are using to attack the former governor, including the Show Missouri Values PAC.

That PAC, which is backed by Schmitt supporter Rex Sinquefield, put around $1 million behind an ad highlighting Sheena Greitens’ domestic violence allegations.

Greitens’ race, literally

Instead of shaking hands and walking into parades this weekend, former Gov. Eric Greitens, a front-runner in the Republican primary, was more than 4,000 miles away from Missouri, running a different kind of race.

Greitens’ campaign said Tuesday that the former governor was in Tampere, Finland competing in the World Masters Championships for the United States. The World Masters Championships is an athletic event for people older than 35 and was originally organized around veterans.

“Governor Greitens was honored to represent the United States of America in running for Team USA at the World Championships over the Fourth of July holiday weekend,” said Dylan Johnson, Greitens’ spokesman.

Greitens, who resigned after less than two years in office amid sexual assault and campaign finance scandals, has led a relatively private campaign throughout the election. He’s skipped debates and most of the traditional Republican Party candidate forums in favor of events with his ardent supporters.

The track event fits in with a larger “strong-man” persona Greitens likes to display. As governor, he’d often partake in feats of strength like rappelling into a rodeo, climbing a rock wall and doing SWAT courses. The strong-man persona attracted national attention last month when Greitens put out a video where he carried a shotgun and said he was hunting republicans in name only, before joining a group of men in camouflage who stormed into an abandoned house.

No debate

Once again the candidates running for U.S. Senate can’t agree on debates. On the Democratic side, retired Marine Lucas Kunce criticized his opponent, philanthropist Trudy Busch Valentine, for refusing to accept an invitation to a debate in St. Louis, resulting in it being postponed.

U.S. Rep. Billy Long instantly drew a comparison between the lack of a Democratic debate and the ongoing challenge of getting all the major Republican candidates on the same stage. Long has criticized Hartzler and Schmitt for declining to participate in a debate in St. Louis where Greitens will appear (he rarely shows at debates).

Meanwhile a debate hosted by Nexstar, which was supposed to be broadcast across the state, was canceled after not enough candidates committed to showing up. Hartzler’s campaign pinned the blame on Greitens and said she agreed to a debate in Springfield that Gray Television is set to host.

Happy Friday

Read this question and answer academic who studies how counties fall into a Civil War. I’m recommending a show: The Bear. It’ll make you want to eat and maybe listen to some Wilco. Instead, listen to this Pete Dello song.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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