Taking a cue from our president, I suppose I am about to “dox” Senator Tom Cotton to roughly 300 readers.
“Doxing” is one of those relatively new words that appears to have entered the language fully formed. It generally refers to publishing personal information about someone online, exposing them to unwanted attention, harassment, pranks, or worse. The concerns are not entirely theoretical. I once worked with the former wife of Capitol Police officer Mike Fanone. Years after their divorce, she was still receiving the occasional random pizza delivery because people track down her address and her connection to Fanone.
So here go: I see Tom Cotton on Friday nights along the sidelines of Madison High School football games in Northern Virginia.
I know this because I am sometimes there myself, maintaining a modest local-media presence. I’ve also seen him standing behind the backstop at baseball games. I assumed he had a child in one of the programs, though I never found him especially approachable and never cared enough to investigate exactly which one. He was simply another parent, albeit one who occasionally appeared on cable news.
That is part of living around Washington. The people we watch arguing on television also turn up at the grocery store, at restaurants, and along the sidelines. Seeing them there is unremarkable. Publishing a personal cellphone number to millions of followers and encouraging them to call is something else.
That is what Trump did to Cotton over their disagreement about daylight saving time.
This is not exactly the issue around which political movements are typically organized. Most Americans do not spend much time thinking about the clock. Many enjoy the extra daylight in the evening during the warmer months. Others value brighter mornings when children are heading to school. Some appreciate the seasonal change itself. Sleep specialists, meanwhile, often argue that permanent standard time is healthiest.
At present, we live under daylight saving time and will revert to standard time when we “fall back” in November. Trump favors ending the twice-yearly ritual by making daylight saving time permanent. In other words, no more falling back. Cotton opposes that proposal, arguing that late winter sunrises would leave children heading to school in darkness. He dislikes changing the clocks, but considers permanent daylight saving time a worse alternative. The third option, keeping standard time year-round after November, has its own constituency, particularly among sleep researchers.
These are legitimate competing concerns. We cannot manufacture another hour of sunlight. We can only change what the clock says when it arrives.
None of this would seem an obvious point of rupture between allies.
Cotton, after all, has been one of Trump’s more reliable lieutenants in the Senate, much as Lindsey Graham had been. Both often give the impression of knowing better than their loyalty allows them to admit. Cotton is a veteran, exceptionally educated, ambitious, and disciplined. Whatever one thinks of his politics, he is not regarded as a whimsical figure. One rarely sees his name floated as a potential swing vote on anything. He is, if anything, less of a wildcard than was Graham.
So why this hill?
Why would Cotton choose it? And perhaps more intriguingly, why would Trump care so much?
Cotton has at least supplied a recognizable answer: children going to school in the dark. One can disagree with his conclusion without finding his concern mysterious.
Trump’s enthusiasm requires more explanation. He has invoked golf and afternoon recreation. But a preference for later sunsets does not explain why a senator’s personal phone should become an instrument of presidential pressure. Trump inserts himself into almost everything. Once he has declared a preference, even an ordinary disagreement can become a test of whether someone is willing to defy him.
So why publicly target a loyal ally and a prominent figure within his own movement over something as mundane as the clock?
The question is not whether Trump can offer an argument for permanent daylight saving time. It is why offering a different argument earns Cotton this treatment.
If this is about enforcing discipline, about demonstrating that even on a question as ordinary as what the clock should say when the sun rises, deviation from the president’s position will be noticed and punished, then the episode is more revealing than the issue itself.
We have survived passionate disagreements about taxes, wars, immigration, trade, and the scope of federal power. If we are now reaching the point where political figures cannot disagree about the time of day without inviting presidential retaliation, then the condition of our democracy may be more fragile than we realized.
After all, if there is no room for dissent on the clock, where exactly is there room for dissent?