William Mac Thornberry is a former Chairman of the Armed Service Committee and member of the United States House of Representatives, where he represented the 13th District of Texas for 26 years. He was also a member of the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade, he has been a leader in critical national security issues. He was a leader in the creation of the National Nuclear Security Administration that aimed to improve the management of the nation’s nuclear weapon complex. He has worked on preparing the military for new forms of warfare such as space and cyber attacks and improving the oversight of the sensitive military and cyber operations.
This interview, conducted by Syed Ahmed and Coby Garcia, has been edited for clarity.
Harvard Political Review: You represent the most Republican district in the United States by partisan voting index, what does it mean to you to be Republican? And what actions have you taken that are representative of your Republican identity in the United States?
Mac Thornberry: Well, I should mention that it wasn’t always a Republican district. As a matter of fact, when I was first elected, I defeated a three-term Democratic congressman who represented the district before me. But I think the people in the district have always seen themselves as conservatives, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. You know, I’m proud of the Republican Party’s heritage. These days, you have some people who are saying, Oh, I’m going to leave the party because I don’t like President Trump or things. I’m not going to leave the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan. And I think the identity of the party largely is around strong defense, lower taxes, limited government. Some of those things that President Reagan talked about, obviously, need to be applied to today. But that’s the general approach. And that means you have trust in individuals. And that you think government ought to be at the level closest to the people.
Harvard Political Review: What was your toughest moment as a representative for the 13th District of Texas?
Mac Thornberry: Really, two things come to mind. It was really tough for my wife, Sally, and me to go to funerals of service members who’d been killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first time I ever went to a funeral in Arlington National Cemetery, it was a constituent and his family attended the same church that we attend. So it was close, it was personal. And it’s really hard to talk to parents or widows or whoever. The other thing that comes to mind is it was really hard for me as time goes on when I would have constituents who believed in email, no matter what the facts say. I started seeing signs of that about 2014 or something so before President Trump, but you couldn’t give them facts to change their mind. It was the sort of thing that we see a lot more of now. And that was really hard.
Harvard Political Review:
He stated that for everything there is this season, and I believe the time has come for change and a statement regarding your decision to not run as a candidate for re-election. What changes do you think your community, Texas in the United States in general has in store?
Mac Thornberry: There is a lot of change happening quickly. I should say, I guess, first of all, that I never expected to stay in Congress 26 years. So it was definitely time for me to do something else. But there are a lot of changes happening all around us. And I guess the change that we see is going to depend on the decisions that we make. In other words, I don’t think that there is an inevitability about good or bad and depends on what we’ve seen, for example, I’ve done a fair amount of work on artificial intelligence. And so we see one side of it that is incredibly hopeful and promising, where not only can we cure disease, but we can prevent disease, by using AI with large data sets. And so we’re then we saw some of that with the vaccines for COVID, that sped that process up. On the other hand, AI is being used by the Chinese government to monitor their people in ways that are just mind-blowing, that the kind of the authoritarians of the past could only dream about where they monitor where they go, what they click on everything about them and so good or bad. And I think that’s kind of an example of the kind of change ahead of us, it could be good or bad. But it depends on the decisions we make.
Harvard Political Review: You are one of the first Republicans in Texas to recognize that President Biden had won, what prompted you to make the decision to recognize the legitimacy of our election?
Mac Thornberry: I believe very strongly in institutions, that the institutions we serve are not perfect. But they are bigger, more important, and will last longer than I as an individual or my personal opinions. And so our institutions, our secretaries of state, our election process, our electoral college, all said that President Biden won the election. So why would you not say that? Why would you not acknowledge that? To say that I didn’t like that outcome, therefore, I’m not going to represent is not only selfish, but it undermines the institutions that are bigger and more important than any of us.
Harvard Political Review: What current challenges do you think your successor, Congressman Jackson, and other current politicians face now in such a polarized time in our democracy?
Mac Thornberry: I think everybody in elected office faces the challenge of how you can look at each issue on its merits and not just be against the other side. I mean, that’s really what you see a lot of in Congress, on both parties, it’s if therefore I’m against it, whatever it is, and And so somehow, we’ve got to break through that and the challenges if that’s what the people who the representatives work for, want to see. It’s kind of hard to break out. But that’s, I think that’s, that’s what we have to do. I can’t think of a time actually where I got exactly what I wanted in a bill. If I thought it moved in the right direction, made progress, then I tried to vote for it. And understanding that I would have a chance to come back and get a little bit more and get, you know, go a little bit further. But that’s hard in today’s political culture. And that’s a challenge they face too.
Part of my advice is, try to help put things in context. How does this fit into the bigger picture? If you’re working on something, for example, a bill in Congress, explains not just why it’s good, and while the other people are bad, but how it can make everybody’s life better, what’s the bigger picture here? And I think that’s really one of the things that are lacking
Harvard Political Review: Your name has become synonymous with national security, what threats both externally and internally, do you think the next generation of politicians will need to be prepared for?
Mac Thornberry: Well, I think, starting now and into the next generation, as almost everybody agrees, China is the most significant external threat that we face. And it’s different from the old Soviet Union, which was a military threat. But China is also economic, and in some ways, a cultural and an ideological threat to us, and so it’s going to be very challenging when you have a country that is competing, if not threatening us, basically at every level. But while we have to keep our main focus, in some ways on China, that doesn’t mean terrorism is going away, it doesn’t mean that North Korea is going to stop sending up missiles with nuclear warheads on them, just to remind us that they’re there too. So we have to pay attention to those threats, Russia or Iran, while China is the most significant threat.
I do think though, our most significant threat is not external, it’s internal. Because China, Russia, and all of these folks are looking at what’s happening inside the United States. And they are seeing the vulnerability with the dysfunction in our politics, for example, and they’re trying to exploit it. I mean, there’s been a number of press stories about Russia, that will take out Facebook ads on both sides of a controversial issue just to, you know, just make it harder for us to come together. And so I think the most significant national security threat facing the United States is internal, what we decide to do whether we maintain a strong national defense, whether we can have a functioning political system, whether we can come together on some issues, even if we disagree about others, I think that’s the biggest thing facing this.
Harvard Political Review: What prompted you to become an IOP Fellow?
Mac Thornberry: Two things: one is, I wanted to encourage some of the country’s best and brightest to consider public service, it doesn’t have to be military service, there are all sorts of public service that doesn’t have to be federal, they can be state and local. But I think that’s really important. If we’re going to solve some of the problems we’ve talked about, we’ve got to have those willing to participate in public service. And I’d say secondly, I’m a conservative Republican from Texas. And I wanted to be an example of someone who wasn’t mad about it, or not like some of the people you see on television, that to be here in an environment where not everybody is conservative and Republican, and still be respectful of each other’s views, and so forth, and hopefully to be maybe a little better example than what we see on TV and elsewhere.
I came here to try to encourage students and I think what’s happening is more than that, as students are encouraging me. Most of the students I interact with are just looking for answers and trying to do the right thing and wanting to help each other. And then that’s what we need more of in this country. And so that’s, I think my primary takeaway from this experience is going to be one of encouragement that man things are looking pretty good. Maybe we’ll just turn it over to y’all soon. We’ll be okay.
It’s easy for any of us, and maybe especially for the most idealistic of us to get cynical, disillusioned, and say, Oh, that’s a mess, and it’s never going to get any better. I don’t think that’s true. But I would say all of us, even when we’re disappointed, disgusted, or whatever, need to maintain a sense of optimism about what is possible for the United States and where we can be. I would say one big lesson I learned from my time in Congress was that the strength of the country is not in Washington, DC. It’s in communities and neighborhoods all over the country.
Image from the School of Media and Public Affairs at GWU is licensed under the CC BY 2.0 license.
