Tillis could have been a great Senator. But he failed

Thom Tillis was once driven by a blazing ambition. Determined to become a political star, he rocketed from the Cornelius Town Council to the US Senate in barely a decade. He liked to envision himself as a premier political player, always operating under the bright lights of power. But as his 20-year political career draws to a close, the grasping Republican leaves office as a failure.

Thom Tillis accomplished a great deal in electoral politics. He was the primary engineer crafting the first GOP majority in the North Carolina House since the 19th century. Credited with this transformational victory, Tillis was elected Speaker of the NC House in 2011 despite serving only two previous terms. Before his second term as Speaker had concluded, Tillis won election to the US Senate. He then got reelected against the odds, and became North Carolina’s senior Senator.

The intense drive that propelled Tillis to these offices could have made him a great senator. His ambitions were grandiose, but he had the
legislative skill and the right instincts to become a legislator of historic consequence. As a senator, Tillis negotiated difficult, ambitious deals on major issues like gun control, same-sex marriage, and immigration. He had the savvy to calculate how much he could give away in concessions to seal a bipartisan agreement while keeping the deal acceptable to many Republicans. The Respect for Marriage Act and the gun-control bill were two of the most significant bipartisan laws passed in the last 10 years, and Thom Tillis, of all people, was their main Republican architect.

Tillis had the instincts to become a powerful operator in Washington. Unlike most US Senators (and unlike himself, as State House Speaker), Tillis liked to reach across the aisle. He craved greatness, which in the Senate tends to gravitate toward bipartisan dealmakers. And he sought to make deals on big issues. His bipartisan laws were not the ticky-tacky bills that often attract broad support because neither
Democrats nor Republicans fear that they will lose their seats over them. Tillis dug into the most explosive controversies of the culture wars, and built coalitions for big compromises.

Yet he won’t even make it to the primary. Tillis’s prodigious senatorial potential has come to dust. Burdened by low approval ratings and harried by the MAGA tribe, Tillis is retiring at the end of his second term. He could have been a great senator, but he had two fatal weaknesses that made him little more than an overambitious pretender.

Unlike the greatest politicians, Tillis lacked the political talent to secure his base. Giants like Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy could work
across the aisle on controversial legislation while remaining beloved by their party’s most committed ideologues. Reagan raised taxes and passed a comprehensive immigration reform in his second term while remaining the greatest icon in conservative America. Tillis, who
lacked Reagan’s charisma and nose for public sentiment, became a hated figure through his bipartisanship and was doomed to lose a primary
before announcing his retirement. Think of it this way: It is impossible to imagine Reagan being censured by the Republican Party for working with Tip O’Neill, but that’s what happened to Tillis for passing bipartisan bills.

Second, Tillis was never a true public servant. He would tread on the doorstep of Valhalla but always return to the grimy world of political
ambition. His principled stands eventually became a joke. He’d write an op-ed announcing his opposition to Trump’s lawless border-wall
gambit—then vote for the border wall. He’d operate behind the scenes to stop Pete Hegseth from becoming Secretary of Defense, then throw
Hegseth’s battered wife under the bus by voting to make the misogynistic lout our Defense Secretary. The conflict between Tillis’s principles and Tillis’s ambition was no contest. He put himself before the country every single time.

Tillis now joins the large club of forgettable North Carolina senators. How many North Carolinians could identify Alton Lennon, Lee Overman, Jeter Pritchard or Lauch Faircloth? We are an old, populous state that’s left little imprint on the history of the US Senate. Tillis could have been an exception, someone who mattered. But in 20 years he will simply be forgotten.