Miles Taylor tells Salzburg Global Seminar about how a desk he once sat behind served as a bulwark against the January 6th insurrection
Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow, Miles Taylor, was previously Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during Donald Trump’s presidency. He entered the public spotlight when he revealed himself as ‘Anonymous’, the author of The New York Times’ op-ed in 2018, ‘I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration’ and of the book in 2019, ‘A Warning’. In response, Trump called for Miles to be prosecuted, labelling him a “low-life” and a “sleazebag”. In July 2022, Miles became a co-founder of the centrist Forward Party seeking to be a third party option in the U.S..
While in Salzburg taking part in the American Studies program Democracy on the Front Lines: Polarization, Culture and Resilience in America and the World, Miles talked to us openly about the various twists and turns that his political journey has taken.
Miles candidly admits that his life has not followed the trajectory that he expected. This life-long conservative, who worked in government under two Republican presidents, who then publicly endorsed the Democratic president Joe Biden, is now a co-founder of a party whose slogan is “Not left. Not right. FORWARD.” To make sense of the many directions of Miles Taylor’s life, we started from the beginning when he was a precocious schoolboy in the Midwestern state of Indiana.
First, let’s go backwards in time…
Miles describes where he grew up as “a little farm town”. And yet, he was attracted to the bright lights of the political hub in Washington, D.C. from a young age, securing an exclusive spot as a teenage page in the House of Representatives, which gave him a “front row seat to democracy”. So, what drew him to politics even then?
“Frankly speaking, I wanted to enter public policy because that's where I thought good guys could go beat bad guys.”
“I grew up like any kid, obsessed with superheroes and superhero cartoons. And as I grew up, it seemed to me like real-life superheroes were public leaders and they were in public policy.”
There is something distinctly “Marvel” about him, what with his charming nature, his hair styled perfectly to one side. One could imagine him back then playing the part of schoolboy Peter Parker in and around the big-name Avengers, except that his Captain America and Iron Man would have been George W. Bush and Al Gore. After all, being a page is “the best kept secret in American democracy” according to Miles – a secret better kept than Tom Holland’s Spiderman identity at least.
Indeed, it is a secret so well kept that even when it is right there in front of everyone’s eyes, in one of the most famous images from January 6th, it is only the trained eye of an ex-page that notices it: “The only thing that prevented [the insurrectionists] from storming the chamber was [that the security forces] pushed a piece of furniture in front of the door…it just so happens that it was the page desk that I sat at.”
“So, my desk as a teenager, the desk that to me symbolized hope and idealism about politics and bipartisanship, ended up being the last line of resort to prevent armed insurrectionists from storming the House chamber and overturning American democracy.”
Miles himself recognizes the almost absurdly poetic quality to this anecdote, joking that an author would reject it because the metaphor is so obvious. But this is not a literary piece, and the meaning of the page’s desk to Miles is as obvious as it is true. Sometimes, the real world follows scripts deemed too ridiculous for any fictional universe.
A brief detour to the left on the political spectrum…
Miles’ public support for Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 represented a volte-face for a hitherto strong Republican. Two years on, Miles’ evaluation of Joe Biden’s government is “an administration of enormous contradiction”.
On the one hand, Miles believes that Biden has protected the democratic foundations of the U.S. successfully, but on the other, that he has failed to promote a unifying, bipartisan brand of politics by catering to the far left of the Democratic Party.
“And the result is, I think, a country that is more polarized.”
Nevertheless, he is adamant that he does not regret endorsing Biden over Trump, explaining that “I thought it was a lot more important for a person of character to be in the presidency than someone who shared my political views.” Miles’ litmus test of character is, of course, applied equally to President Trump under whom he once served.
And turning to face the right…
Ever since he wrote that bombshell op-ed in The New York Times, Miles has become well-versed at discussing the topic of Trump at length. Even so, his quasi-Socratic comments on Trump’s character and virtue, or rather lack thereof, are still striking as much for their content as for their lucidity and clarity of thought:
“Character, by definition, is the application of virtue. Virtue is taking your values and acting on your values. When I say Donald Trump is a man that lacked character, I mean it in the most literal sense of the term [in] that he lacked foundational values.”
“There was no discerning moral compass or first principles that he held other than naked and transactional self-interest. And, therefore, his application of those values was lacking because there weren't any.”
During a mock Midterm election for Georgia at Salzburg Global Seminar’s American Studies program, Miles played the role of Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, with his usual charisma.
At the time of the interview, the actual Midterm elections were a few days away, which Miles predicted would be “an exclamation point at the end of a sentence about the rise of MAGA [Make America Great Again]”.
In fact, Miles was so confident the Midterms, regardless of the outcome, would show that “the MAGA wing of the Republican Party is not only ascendant, but it maintains a vice-like grip on the entirety of the Republican Party” that he changed tense mid-sentence from the future perfect “will have shown” to the perfect “have shown”, as though providing political commentary (as he often does for CNN) post-elections.
At the time of writing, the Midterms have just taken place, and so the ramifications are still yet to emerge clearly in the aftermath, but early indications are that the “red wave” of Republican gains has not materialized at the magnitude expected. The dust must settle first, of course, but the finely poised balance between the Democrats and the Republicans would surely make interesting reading for a man advocating a centrist third party.
Time to move forward…
“I've been a hyper-skeptic of third parties my whole life”, confesses Miles, the co-founder of a new third party – the Forward Party.
So, what changed? “[…] the data started to change and Americans have signaled a deep interest in [a third party option].” Miles then reels off a list of statistics demonstrating that, 1) Americans are feeling increasingly alienated from both parties due to the rise of left- and right-wing extremism, and 2) the electoral system in the U.S. is designed to keep incumbents in office without facing any meaningful competition.
Supported by these two pillars, Miles lays out an abridged manifesto of the Forward Party: “So, what we aim to do in the coming years is start to revise the rules of the game, make structural reforms to democracy to allow for greater competition from third parties (plural), and elect more unifying candidates that reflect the common-sense majority.”
The rationale behind the founding of an anti-extremist third party is intriguing – “a tribe for the tribeless”, as Miles coins it – but the frank introspection of his personal motivation for co-founding the party is just as fascinating: “The honest answer, I think, like any founder, is for completely selfish reasons. I wanted to build the product because I want to use the product.”
After leaving the Republican Party in May 2022 but still holding his ideologically conservative views, Miles was left without a political home, so he built one for himself. He is realistic about the obstacles facing a third party in the U.S. (history would suggest these are insurmountable), acknowledging that “like America itself, we are an experiment to go test that thesis [of a unifying third party].”
But his ambition for the Forward Party is evident: that the home he originally built for himself may become a home for millions of other alienated Americans.
Let’s fast-forward far into the future…
It is not the first time that Miles has been associated with the word “ambition”. So, what is ultimately the dream for Miles Taylor, the person?
“I really hope to make a modest impact on steering our political system back towards balance. I would see success as being a middle-aged man who sees that the debate in our country has nothing to do with its core foundations, and that we've reverted back to regular old policy debates about the issues.”
It could be argued that Miles has already achieved a “modest impact” by speaking out against Trump. However, when asked about the proudest moment in his life so far, he brings this up, presumably knowing that this might be the expected answer, only to dismiss it somewhat: “[…] I don't consider myself…courageous. I consider a lot of the people that were in the Republican Party with me as cowardly.”
And, on the threat to the “core foundations” of the U.S. posed by Trump, Miles gravely asserts, “If we [Americans] had re-elected [Trump] in 2020, I do not think America would have reached its 300th birthday in this century, and I still believe that to be the case.” One gets the impression that he is someone who has pondered the long-term future of his country more than his personal future.
In fact, one of his not-so-lofty ambitions – “[…] at some point to take a nice long break” – is grounded in the here and now of his life.
“[…] I think this is genuinely the worst time to be in American politics in modern history. It is a pride-swallowing siege every single day. And the honest answer is I hate politics […] I'm working in a profession right now that I loathe every single day.”
And he has left politics before, previously for a short stint at Google. But, according to Miles, after January 6th, Evan McMullin, who ran for President in 2016 as an independent and has just been defeated in the Midterms for Utah’s seat in the Senate, called him to tell him to stay in the fight.
“And I’ve stayed in since.”
The balance that Miles advocates in politics is just as important in his personal life – indeed, it is perhaps the secret to how he manages to keep on fighting. For, when that day does come for him to leave the political ring for good, he will finally be able to take that break, together with the actual answer he gave to what he is most proud of in his life – his partner and “the love of [his] life”, Hannah.
