Adam Schiff, Global Rorschach: Why the World Sees Its Own Reflection in One California Congressman

Adam Schiff: The Last Man Standing Between Global Order and Reality-TV Geopolitics
By Our Correspondent Somewhere East of the Potomac

When Adam Schiff strides into a Brussels think-tank these days, the room quiets the way it once did for Kissinger—except the wine is biodynamic and the audience is doom-scrolling TikTok under the table. To much of the planet, the California congressman is no longer merely the House Democrat with the prosecutorial jawline; he has become a geopolitical weathervane, the human cue that the United States might, just might, still believe in rules it refuses to follow in daylight. From Warsaw to Wellington, diplomats parse his every grimace the way Kremlinologists once examined Brezhnev’s eyebrows. If Schiff sighs, the yen wobbles. If he smirks, some poor dictator’s offshore account in the Caymans suddenly sprouts subpoenas.

Europeans, still nursing Brexit heartbreak and the eternal hangover of colonial nostalgia, watch Schiff as a walking morality play: the last American still pretending that the transatlantic alliance is about values rather than fighter-jet purchase orders. In Berlin, officials whisper that Schiff’s 2019 impeachment performance was the best piece of political theater since the Berlin Wall fell—part Cicero, part Netflix limited series. They admire his restraint in not once using the phrase “very stable genius,” a phrase that, translated into 24 languages, still sounds like a Yelp review for a psych ward.

Across the Pacific, the Chinese foreign ministry has reportedly built an entire algorithmic model—Project Panda Schadenfreude—devoted to predicting Schiff’s next move. The model’s success rate, insiders joke, is only slightly better than a Beijing air-quality forecast, but it keeps mid-level cadres busy and off TikTok. In Tokyo, analysts note that every time Schiff appears on CNN, the Nikkei dips 0.3% out of sheer performative anxiety. Meanwhile, Seoul’s defense planners have coined the term “Schiff Shield”: the hope that if things go nuclear, at least one adult in Washington remembers the launch codes aren’t supposed to be tweeted.

The Global South views Schiff with a mixture of bemusement and weary recognition. Lagos podcasters call him “the man who audits empire,” a title that sounds flattering until you remember audits usually end with someone’s cousin in jail. In Buenos Aires, where inflation is measured in Borgesian metaphysics, Schiff’s crusades against oligarch money-laundering are treated as aspirational fiction—like magical realism, but with better subpoena power. Nairobi’s tech bros have even gamified his investigations: users earn “SchiffCoin” every time a shell company in the British Virgin Islands gets named on C-SPAN. (Current exchange rate: 1 SchiffCoin = 0.0003 Bitcoin or one lukewarm Tusker.)

Of course, cynics from Reykjavik to Riyadh point out that Schiff’s moral clarity is calibrated for a domestic audience that can’t find Ukraine on a map unless it’s labeled “Where Biden’s Laptop Vacationed.” The same Europeans applauding his defense of NATO still quietly sell spyware to the very autocrats Schiff chastises. And let’s not forget that the global financial system laundering kleptocratic billions is headquartered less in Moscow than in that charming district of London where the scones are warm and the morals are chilled.

Yet, absurd as it sounds, Schiff persists as a sort of secular saint for the rules-based order—a phrase that, repeated enough times, begins to sound like a bedtime story for anxious technocrats. His very existence reassures allies that the American experiment hasn’t completely devolved into a season of “Survivor: Mar-a-Lago.” When he announced his 2024 Senate run, the collective sigh of relief from foreign ministries was audible even over the roar of Russian disinformation bots. Sure, the bots immediately labeled him “Soros in human form,” but that only confirmed he was doing something right.

In the end, perhaps the greatest irony is that Adam Schiff—mild-mannered, former U.S. Attorney, still using complete sentences—has become an international Rorschach test. The world stares at him and sees whatever it desperately needs: a last line of defense, a useful enemy, a flicker of competence in an age where competence is rated three stars on Trustpilot. And if the flicker dies? Well, there’s always the next season. The writers’ room is global now, and the cliffhangers are literal.