Bill Straub: Bevin’s political future could be behind his late-blooming support of Trump

WASHINGTON – Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin sometimes comes across like Frank Burns in the old, long-running M*A*S*H* television show.

He sidesteps a potentially dicey situation then pushes his way to the fore and claims credit when, against all odds, the result is a surprising success.

Reluctant at best to express pre-convention support for President-elect Donald J. Trump in his shocking yet ultimately successful run for the White House, Bevin has somehow emerged as one of the shyster’s leading cheerleaders, hoping his turnabout will somehow prove fruitful for the commonwealth he serves.

Bevin’s hesitancy to endorse Trump during the primary season, long after it became obvious the New York City slickster was guaranteed the GOP nomination, remains something of a mystery. Both men appear cut from the same cloth – successful businessmen with plenty of dough in their pockets who disdain the regular political order, talk before they think and insist on being treated as the smartest men in the room regardless of whether or not they earned the honorific.

Yet even as late as May, Bevin was shrugging his shoulders over the party’s obvious standard bearer, telling the Washington Post “Let me see who it will be’’ when asked if he would support Trump. “More than the party, I’m interested in people who are conservative. Sadly, the most conservative people are no longer in the race,” referring, no doubt to his initial choice, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, who Trump ground up like cheap hamburger in the early going, forcing his departure.

Bevin wouldn’t even say if he considered Trump a conservative, telling the Post, “I’ll let people make their own determination on that.’’

But somewhere along the line Bevin drank the Kool-Aid and now seemingly lists himself among Trump’s biggest supporters, so dedicated that he eagerly skipped the commonwealth’s traditional holiday, er, Christmas tree lighting ceremony to head for Cincinnati where Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence were appearing as part of the team’s victory tour.

The governor, at that affair and thereafter, slobbered all over himself making it known that he now considers the racist, bigoted, xenophobic Trump the greatest thing since canned beer and he expects wonderful things to start rolling out of the District of Columbia at any moment now.

“The more time I spend with Donald Trump, the better I get to know him, the more respect I have for him,” Bevin told Kentucky Today, a publication of the Kentucky Baptist Convention that is quickly becoming one of his favorite news outlets. “He’s a man of far greater integrity than people would have us believe. He’s a man who says something and means it. He delivers.”

Integrity and Donald Trump in the same sentence. It really has become a fact-free society.

During his speech at the rally Bevin made the obligatory Republican comparison of Trump to Winston Churchill – presumably that part of old Winnie’s career that came after he died in 1965 – and added, “The American dream is alive and it is well, and with Mike Pence and Donald Trump we have the ability to believe in it, we have the ability to realize it, we have the ability for people to be able to pursue it the like they’ve not had in a very, very long time.”

So now that he’s righted himself with the bossman, the question must center on what Bevin expects to get out of all this. At first blush it appears he’s playing both a long game and a short game.

The short game is likely the usual – bringing federal largesse to the Bluegrass. A couple things already stick out – his desire to get a Medicaid waiver that will enable him to pick the pockets of poor people and transportation assistance, perhaps including funding to replace the Brett Spence Bridge linking Covington with Cincinnati across the Ohio River, a span that has been determined to be functionally obsolete.

Of greater interest is the long game and where Bevin hopes to land after his time in Frankfort draws to a close. The governor may be many things in the eyes of his fawning followers but he’s never been accused of modesty or maintaining low ambitions. It’s obvious he’s focused on bigger game and trying to figure out the best way to achieve his goals. Cozying up to the president-elect, who famously craves adoration, isn’t a bad place to start.

Bevin turns 50 on Jan. 9, 2017, still relatively young for a politician looking to move up, but time marches on. His term as governor runs three more years and he’s unlikely to face major opposition if he decides to seek re-election in 2019 given the reactionary spirit of the Kentucky electorate.

But there could be other options. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, turns 75 in February and his current term runs to 2021, when he will be almost 79 years old. The longest-serving member of the upper chamber in the commonwealth’s history is presumably in good health and already is indicating that he intends to seek a seventh term, which would keep him in the Capitol until he’s 85.

By that time Bevin would be 60 and out of office for at least three years. Patience is not the governor’s virtue so he would have to look elsewhere.

Beyond the hope that Paul determines he’ll never become president and thus decides to end his senate tenure and not seek re-election in 2022 – a year before Bevin’s potential second term comes to a close – he may Have to settle for a presidential appointment, perhaps cabinet-level, of some sort.

But there’s already talk that Bevin has his eyes on the grand prize, taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That would obviously be a tall order but, given last November’s results, it does indeed appear that anything is possible.

Regardless, it’s a hard road to navigate. For one thing, given the character of the president-elect and the cult of personality that has built up around him, Trump will likely seek re-election four years hence at age 74, presuming there remains a republic left to govern. After exhausting Roget’s Thesaurus of all the sycophantic words he could collect to describe the president-elect, it’s unlikely Bevin will challenge Trump in the 2020 Republican primaries.

That takes him to 2024, when he will be 57 years old, still a babe compared to some folks who have recently sought the world’s highest office. But even that provides an awkward set-up.

The man he has described as one of his closest political friends, the person he introduced at the Cincinnati rally, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, will be 65 and probably well prepared to take his own shot at the title. Challenging a sitting vice president, not to mention a good buddy, has its drawbacks.

Pence’s presence could leave Bevin out on the curb for an additional four to eight years beyond Trump, at which time he may have reached the ripe old age of 66 and without an elected office to call home for several years. His outside chance might therefore rest with the hope that Pence sees selecting a vice presidential candidate from a state that borders his Indiana home might not be such a bad idea.

It’s a funny thing. On this day Bevin is only 49-years-old. But his time in the limelight may prove short.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.