Why does Pete Hegseth call himself secretary of war? ‘Dopey but dangerous’ wouldn’t fit on a badge

He has survived blame for the US midterms disaster and dodged an impeachment vote, but it will be one battle after another now – and he can’t win them all

Like the brief, wondrous cycle of the mayfly, we may come to look back on the career of Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence who cheekily rebranded himself secretary of war, as the defining appointment of the Trump era: that is, one in which extraordinary power was handed to a man of cartoonish inappropriateness and which, despite this week’s shelved attempt to impeach him, may still turn out to have been luminously short-lived. In January, the Democrats will assume a majority in both chambers and are likely to have another crack at impeaching Hegseth. In the meantime, we can only look on and wonder at his meaning.

It is quite something, in the context of Trump cabinet appointments that have included Robert F Kennedy Jr and Kristi Noem, to be the most glaringly underqualified person in the West Wing, but since being sworn in almost two years ago, Hegseth has comfortably seen off any rivals to his crown. This week, eight articles of impeachment, or “high crimes and misdemeanours” as the official rubric has it, were levied against him by Thomas Massie, an outgoing Republican congressman from Kentucky, who accused Hegseth of illegal acts including violating the constitution by conducting an unauthorised war with Iran and effecting regime change in Venezuela.

Republicans narrowly saw off the proceedings and, somewhat to the surprise of observers, joined the president in rallying energetically to Hegseth’s defence. This, too, may not last; in the wake of the Republicans’ shellacking in the midterms, speculation as to who would take the fall for Trump’s losses focused on Hegseth, after JD Vance pointed to the Iran war as a root cause of the losses. But perhaps this underestimates Hegseth’s appeal to the president. If Greg Bovino, the former US immigration chief who quit after two people were killed by agents under his command, looked like a textbook psycho in the manner of Sean Penn’s Col Steven J Lockjaw – the screw-loose character from the movie One Battle After Another – Hegseth is a different beast entirely; a Mr Incredible-like figure whose persona is so ridiculous, so dopey, as to distract from his dangerousness.

Such a manoeuvre is, of course, in line both with Trump’s own highly developed ability to marry deadly threat levels with the affect of a buffoon, and a more general tradition in the US of men of war who operate with the affability of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Cast your minds back to Gen “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf, a man shaped like a freestanding wardrobe, who led coalition forces in the first Gulf war, or Colin Powell, his senior at the time who, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and despite leading the most powerful military in the world, appeared at briefings with the casual ease and likability of a lounge singer.

Compare this with the way we do things in this country, where, generally speaking, we like our military men to be slight of form, quiet of voice, thin of moustache and ruthless of execution. As a platonic ideal, if military officers in the US take the shape of comfy old Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, in Britain we’re more partial to Trevor Howard in The Third Man, all twinkly eyes and icy veins, or the unyielding Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai, a man who, beneath his quivering, rule-following exterior, is as pitiless as rain and as mad as a snake. Both represent sleights of hand, to some degree. Take your pick.

Hegseth, of course, never led the US army. While serving in the military, he rose to the middling rank of major (it was his service on Fox & Friends that, in all likelihood, made him a four-star general in Trump’s eyes). And US defence secretaries aren’t themselves expected to be especially martial; let’s enjoy a quick drive-by on the memory of Dick Cheney, secretary of defence under George H W Bush, accidentally shooting his own hunting buddy in the face during a quail hunting trip in southern Texas.

But Hegseth looks the part, not just of the genial American warrior, but of the very specific ideal favoured by Trump in which the quiff-wearing, square jaw-rocking secretary of defence embodies the 1950s aesthetic for which the president pines. If Democrats manage to impeach and oust him next year, he may linger in our minds, against stiff competition, as the most hollow, disastrous and surreal piece of casting in Trump’s cabinet of misfits and rogues.