George Will targets Hawley in column arguing senators shouldn't be president

Longtime right-leaning pundit George Will argues in his most recent Washington Post column that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to prevent senators from running for president – though his broad argument appears to be a direct effort to disqualify Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley.

"No No senator or former senator shall be eligible to be president," Will suggested should be written into the Constitution, before noting that 17 of the nation's presidents have ascended from the halls of the Senate to the White House.

He continued to say that during the last half-century, 328 senators have "illustrated the tyranny of the bell-shaped curve: a few of them dreadful, a few excellent, most mediocre."

"Although Josh Hawley, Missouri's freshman Republican, might not be worse than all other 327, he exemplifies the worst about would-be president incubated in the Senate," he continues. 

The columnist goes on to argue that Hawley has, since arriving in the capital in 2019, "hit the ground running – away from the Senate."

Most recently, Hawley garnered headlines for his aggressive questioning of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for what the senator considered her lenient sentencing patterns in child pornography cases. 

Hawley, Will says, was the "principal catalyst" of the effort to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election, though he hopes the next presidential cycle will carry him to the White House. Hawley was the first member of the Senate to declare that he would object to the certification of Democrat President Biden's 2020 victory.

Hawley is also considered a likely potential contender for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination and is a regular face on the conservative media circuit, making frequent appearances on popular Fox News shows and the like.

Will criticizes this pattern of the senator's, calling it part of an effort to clamber "aboard every passing bandwagon that can carry him to the Fox News greenroom."