Just elected to what has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body, Tuberville revealed in an interview that he could not name the three branches of the federal government.

The former football coach then put that impressive knowledge to work by lining up with then President Donald Trump to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Tuberville bought Trump’s argument that then Vice President Mike Pence could reinstall Trump just by refusing to certify the results from key battleground states.

Well-informed constitutional scholar that he is, Tuberville never asked why then Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960 and then Vice President Al Gore in 2000—both of whom lost presidential elections by much narrower margins than Trump did—opted not to use such a power to put themselves in the Oval Office.

Tuberville now has turned his attention to the U.S. military.

A devout opponent of reproductive rights for women, Tuberville read the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, in an intriguing way. Most constitutional experts saw the court’s ruling as a mandate to return the question of how abortion should be regulated to the states, rather than recognizing it as a constitutionally protected individual right.

Tuberville, though, came at the issue with rare insight.

Upset about a policy allowing personnel in the armed forces to travel to states in which abortion is legal, he decided to put a stop to military promotions until he gets his way. The backlog of those promotions is now approaching 300, many of them senior posts.

This has had the effect of causing massive uncertainty for our warriors and their families all over the world, disrupting the chain of command and, according to military chieftains in all branches of the service, compromising national security.

Tuberville has been blithely dismissive of the damage he’s done. His commitment to ignorance is absolute. He’s convinced that it not only is bliss but also an unalloyed virtue.

Others are less certain.

Retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis said in a radio interview that Tuberville’s actions set a dangerous precedent. The admiral pointed out that progressive senators who were upset about environmental policies or any other issue could cite Tuberville’s actions as a justification for grinding our defense capacities to a halt.

Even with his keen understanding of the force of precedent—remember, he didn’t even pause to ask why Nixon or Gore didn’t declare themselves president if vice presidents had the power Trump declared they did—Tuberville may not have thought of that.

Nor is it likely that he thought about how setting precedents such as this one can escalate.

We Americans, after all, are in this current cold civil war over reproductive rights because, during their respective times as Senate majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, decided to play games with the process of appointing Supreme Court justices.

For much of this country’s history, Senate rules and traditions required overwhelming majorities to confirm an appointment to any bench, but particularly the highest one. The reasoning for this was that people given lifetime appointments to positions of great power should enjoy broad if not consensus support.

When he was majority leader, Reid, though, grew frustrated with McConnell’s campaign to thwart President Barack Obama’s judicial appointments. What followed was the creation of a so-called “nuclear option,” which allowed for appointment by a simple majority.

When McConnell was majority leader and Trump was president, the nuclear option became the normal one. Incredibly divisive appointees found their way onto the high court, and public trust in the judicial branch plummeted.

Doubtless, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell didn’t set out to undermine confidence in our legal system. They just didn’t think about the long-term effects of their maneuvering to achieve short-term goals.

They didn’t realize how much their actions would politicize the Supreme Court.

Tuberville—the senator who can’t identify or distinguish between the executive, legislative and judicial branches—likely never considered what his “win-at-all-costs” mindset regarding abortion would do to our military.

A veteran of the gridiron, the distinguished senator from Alabama has turned our national security and the careers of the people who defend this country into a political football to be tossed back and forth.

Well done, coach.

Well done.