Mike Pompeo Gets Serious About 2024

Alternatively: Mike Pompeo reveals how seriously he should be taken.

I kinda love that this is what came up when I entered “Pompeo” in Substack’s photo directory. Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has not mentioned former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all that much. That is mostly because the hard-working staff at Spoiler Alerts handled the Pompeo beat when he was in office, concluding that he “has distinguished himself mostly by becoming the 21st-century avatar of Tartuffery.” After choosing not to run for the 2020 Senate seat in Kansas despite Mitch McConnell’s fierce entreaties, Pompeo’s relevance as a foreign policy heavyweight ceased the day he left office. The current staff mostly let sleeping dogs lie.

Over the weekend, however, came some Pompeo news. According to the New York Times’ Maggie Astor:

Mike Pompeo, who served in the Trump administration as director of the C.I.A. and then as secretary of state, said on Friday that he would not seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

“While we care deeply about America, and the issues that I’ve been talking about this last year and half, and frankly for decades, matter an awful lot, this isn’t our moment,” Mr. Pompeo said, referring to himself and his wife, during an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News.

Mr. Pompeo, 59, had indicated his interest in running as he toured early primary states. He said he had not made his decision based on former President Donald J. Trump’s lead in early polls of the Republican race. He also declined to endorse Mr. Trump and obliquely criticized him, saying, “I think Americans are thirsting for people making arguments, not just tweets.”

Pompeo tweeted out a statement that offered some further oleaginous explanation. This included saying, apparently with a straight face, “how heartwarming and humbling it has been when strangers have told me they pray that I run to defend our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, our families and our country as the most exceptional in the history of civilization.”

Pompeo’s decision provokes a little curiosity. Whatever one thinks about Pompeo’s time in power — and to be clear, I didn’t think much of it — he looks good on paper. He graduated first in his class from West Point, picked up a Harvard Business School, got elected to Congress, and then held two cabinet positions in four years. Why did Pompeo choose not to run after trying pretty hard to look the part of presidential candidate?

If I had to hazard a guess, it might that he had zero chance of winning. The Washington Post write-up noted that Pompeo, “was viewed as a likely GOP presidential contender but one who never polled particularly well.” Astor’s NYT write-up provided a smidgen more detail:

Mr. Pompeo took a hawkish and combative approach to his job as director of the C.I.A., which he held for a little over a year from 2017 to 2018. It earned him Mr. Trump’s admiration and a promotion to secretary of state, but he left that office disliked by foreign allies and even many American diplomats. He behaved much the same way after stepping down, forcefully criticizing President Biden’s foreign policy in a way not typical of former secretaries of state.

His aggressive foreign policy positions left him with an increasingly narrow lane for a presidential bid in a Republican Party whose base has shifted away from hawkish views in recent years.

That sounds about right, although it did not deter Nikki Haley from throwing her hat into the ring. One could argue that Pompeo just has a more clear-eyed view of the odds. One could also argue that after two years of sniping on the sidelines, there comes a point when someone who clearly thinks they should be president has to put up or shut up.

Pompeo signaled in his statement that he might run in the future. And he’s only 58, so perhaps that is possible. It is also possible that he has now entered the John Bolton Dimension and for the rest of his days, during every presidential cycle, Pompeo will throw out a trial balloon about running before not doing so.

Perhaps the National Review’s Caroline Downey offered up Pompeo’s most fitting political epitaph in her story about his decision not to run. Her first sentence:

Mike Pompeo, who has called for more seriousness in GOP leadership, is not entering the 2024 presidential race.

During a week in which George Santos decided he should run for re-election, Mike Pompeo thought about it long and hard and decided… that he was an unserious man.

For that, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World thanks Pompeo and hopes to never mention his name again.