Happy New Year to you and everyone!
And where to begin? Well, the most logical place to begin is with the convening of the new House of Representatives. After all, if it's possible for most of us to agree on anything when it comes to politics, it's that none of us have ever witnessed the opening of a new Congress that looked like the spectacle that has unfolded over the past two weeks. And we should be thankful for that fact. When I use the word "spectacle," it's because I try to spare my readers the experience of my using more colorful language.
I witnessed most of the first week, or as much as I could stand of it, because I knew going in that the events that unfolded were going to do even more damage to our politics and governance than we've already witnessed in the Trump era (a label I use reluctantly, since I'm acquainted with Trump's love of plastering his name on everything he touches). I found myself reacting to what I saw with a wider range of emotions than I expected.
On the one hand, not everything I witnessed upset me. Some of it even made me proud. On the other hand, that which I fully expected to be revolting revolted me even more than I expected. Just when you think contemporary Republicans have reached the sub-cellar for bad behavior, they suddenly seem to find another level underneath it. Maybe Trump's background in real estate helps them with that. Maybe, more likely, it simply encourages the cynicism, ambition, and deceit that was always there.
At any rate, the following are my random thoughts and reactions to what unfolded in the People's House.
The professionalism of the congressional staff.
I don't think enough can be said about this. Technically, the new House does not exist until a Speaker is elected, which, in this case, took the better part of a week. As a result, for that span of time, the Clerk of the House, Cheryl Johnson, and her staff were in charge of the proceedings. They are part of that permanent army of government employees that we routinely, and often unthinkingly, refer to with disdain as "bureaucrats." And yet, without that army, the routine functioning of the government, the functioning that we take for granted, the functioning that is based as much on loyalty to our country and dedication to serving its interests, as well as a deep well of institutional experience and professional training, simply would not take place.
I might as well put my personal cards on the table here: I have spent fifteen years of my life as a bureaucrat, in federal and state agencies. During that time, I had the privilege of working with people from both parties, and am happy to assure you that the same level of loyalty, dedication, experience and training that you saw from the Clerk and the members of her staff is typical of most, if not all, of the people working in those agencies--both the career civil servants, and the political appointees. It is, however, the former that particularly carry the burden of day-to-day business. I am proud to be one of them, and I am proud of my bureaucratic brothers and sisters for the work they did in holding the House proceedings together for the week without a Speaker.
Don't take it from me. If there was one thing on which everyone was agreed, it was, based on several of the statements from the House floor, it was on the quality of the work done by the Clerk and her staff. But I want everyone, and I mean everyone, to think about that very carefully, the next time they hear anyone use "bureaucrats" as a scapegoat for what's wrong in Washington, and elsewhere.
The unity and boldness of Democrats
The Democratic caucus, now in the House minority, made it clear that that the three D's the media love to place on their party--depressed, divided, and in disarray--do not define their willingness to do the people's business, or their appreciation of the challenges that exist for them in doing so.
In talking about that, let's start with this.
The entire caucus assembled on the steps of the Capitol, to commemorate the second anniversary of an attempt by a right-wing thugocracy to destroy the honest counting of presidential electoral votes and the legislative process more generally. They were their to commemorate the failure of that effort, and the sacrifices made by law enforcement officials to ensure that failure.
And they were joined by a single Republican. Single, as in one of of the 222-member majority. None of them could be bothered to show up and back the blue with their colleagues.
That may have been the most subtle breach of constitutional behavior by the new majority. But, as other events demonstrated, it was far from the only one.
More about that presently. Back, for now, to Democratic unity.
Perhaps it's because the size of the Republican majority is so small, as well as unstable. Perhaps it's because even the older, less diverse members of the Democratic caucus have seen the future in the increasing number of younger, more diverse members, and understand that it's a future that works (apologies, Lincoln Steffens). Perhaps, more than anything else, it's because every one of those members, young or old, understands the exact nature and power of the threat from across the aisle.
Nevertheless, over the course of all fifteen ballots in the speakership vote, they unanimously stood behind their new leader Hakeem Jeffries, resisting the pleas of corporate media to "reach across the aisle" and vote for a man who couldn't even muster a strong showing from within his own party. They openly mocked, in ways subtle and not-so subtle, the disarray and associated lunacy that they and the people they represent were being subjected to. And, when Jeffries took the podium after the voting for the formal transfer of power from one party to another, they cheered him with one voice as he used the alphabet to mock the new regime.
I appreciate the fact that Democrats stood together and publicly treated the nonsense as nonsense. Which is why I think not having C-SPAN in the House is a bad idea. After all, the current state of disrepair in the House began back in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich used C-SPAN to turn voters away from the long-standing Democratic majority. Turnabout may not be pretty, but it can and should certainly be fair play.
The violence on the floor
In life, as someone once said, there are leaders and followers. And in politics, there are people who have the label of a leader and the behavior of a follower. And, in our current crisis, Kevin McCarthy is Exhibit A for the latter proposition.
Despite being repeated touted in the legacy corporate press as a "moderate," McCarthy is a man without any political compass, or even a moral one. No greater illustration of this exists than his backtracking from his fiery denunciation of Trump and the Capitol attack Trump instigated to his trip to Mar-A-Lago weeks latter to get down on his knees to the Orange Iguana and beg for forgiveness. This show of sniveling was, as the night would show, the shape of things to come. In more ways than one.
The chaos and extremism of the January 6 attack had its analog in the first week of the new Congress, in both the multiple ballots for the speakership and the outrageous demands of a fraction of the GQP caucus for the sake of awarding it to McCarthy. As is the case after every election, the new majority had nearly two months to get its act together, to hash out their differences and show on Day One that they were ready to serve the interests of the nation. In our lifetimes, this sort of orderly transition is so orderly it barely rates five minutes on the evening news.
In this case, it seems that those two months could not have been devoted to anything except the level of disorder and disruption to which the American people were treated to for a week on their screens. And all for the sake of appeasing people who are, basically, unappeasable. They have absolutely no goals other than being in charge. And that much they plainly accomplished. But, in the process, they accomplished something else: demonstrating that the insurrection has moved from outside of the Capitol building to inside the House chamber.
And, however much the House Democrats may have enjoyed watching the party-in-disarray narrative flip to characterizing their opponents, they can't be content with laughing at what is on one level laughable. The chaos inside of the House is likely to lead, perhaps is already beginning to lead, to violence on a par with the attack two years years ago. The near-fist-fight toward the end of the balloting could be a small taste of what is to come.
And not only on the floors of Congress. but here. And abroad. Perhaps nearly everywhere.
You don't want to be in a position of having to oppose force with force? Fine. The sooner one draws a line, the less likely it becomes that one has to openly defend it. We are, frankly, in that position because Democrats in the past haven't heeded that lesson. For all of our sakes, they'd better start heeding it now. That show of unity can't run for a day or a week. It has to be nonstop from here on out.
The transparent weakness of McCarthy
From the partisan standpoint of the GQP, the spectacle of McCarthy sacrificing every perogative he needs to keep the House in order to the claque of fanatics who want to watch everthing burn, and even begging on camera for the votes he needed to stick his nose across the finish line, could not possibly have been worse. Gutting the House ethics office, even as the fanatics scheme to impeach the entire Biden administration. Given them a chance to systemically defund entire federal offices should anyone in them make a peep against the interests of the fanatics' donors. Enabling them to put McCarthy's job in jeopardy by a single vote if he doesn't say "How high?" every them one of them says "Jump!"
McCarthy has given away so much of the power of the office he just barely obtained that it might be a compliment to even call him a follower. He is certainly no one's idea of a leader. He may very well be little more at this point than a hood ornament on the authoritarian jalopy of his caucus.
The transparently bad GQP spin on the process
Spin, spin, spin. Yes, both parties do it, and I'm guilty of it from time to time myself. But the Republicans do it with more shamelessness and less fidelity to the facts than do Democrats. That's primarily because Republicans, like the majority of Americans, evaluate everything, even matters of significant substance, by way of style points. That, sadly, is evidence of a society that is in decay because of the distance between its founding principles and its present state.
And without question, the House GQP caucus was doing its best (or worst) to spin-doctor the nightmare unfolding before the viewing public. Oh, its members said, this is just the sort of deliberation every party needs to go through when it re-takes power. Once this sorts itself out, they assured us, we'll be astonished by how ready they are to lead the nation, by way of investigating every Biden they can get their hands on.
I'll say this much for them: they are astonishing, although not in the way they might want us to think that they are. But I repeat: they had nearly TWO MONTHS to sort everything out and spare us the week-long debacle. I find myself remembering the public clichés of previous Republican conquests. "Hit the ground running." "Ready on Day One." This was more like hitting the ground stumbling, and needing all the luck in the world to be ready by Labor Day.
Perhaps the best way to sum up both the cravenness of McCarthy's grasping climb to power and the Orwellian confidence the GQP has in its ability to memory-hole anything is this. I tend to doubt that this can or will actually happen. Expungement is a legal procedure by which an individual convicted of a crime can have all records related to that conviction purged. How do you do that with a historic event that has been recorded all over the world? For that matter, how do you convince the other house of Congress to purge its records of the trials it conducted, neither of which resulted in a conviction?
And one more thing, relating to my earlier observation about C-SPAN. Whether or not you think that open monitoring of Congress is or is not a good idea, you're about to lose the opportunity to gain more evidence for making a decision on that point. That's because Kevin and company are, at least for now, making that choice for you.
The bad news is that the only thing this House will ever be ready for is chaos. The even worse news is that it is likely to drag all of us into that chaos.
Leaving one last point to make here:
The education for the rest of us: is it even possible to reach across the aisle if all you’re going to get is a fist fight?
Very unlikely. There are only going to be two things that will take their focus off of shooting themselves and the rest of us in the foot.
The first is going to be the need to protect themselves. Gutting the House ethics office is only the first step. After that, they're going to need to spend time on putting out the fires that will erupt in the press whenever one or more members stumble and have their corruption exposed for all to see. Freshman GQP Congressman George Santos (or whatever his name is) remains the most immediate example for the moment. But be assured: there will be others.
Speaking of Santos, note that his Republican defenders are describing what he has done as having "embellished" his resume. Wrong. I speak as someone who has, in a former life, been paid to write resumes professionally. Using a word like "manage" to describe making multiple coffee deliveries is embellishment. Saying you graduated from a college you never attended is a bald-face, unabashed lie. And Santos' resume is chock-full of them. If Gym Jordan is right in saying that every Republican does this, that's all you need to know to never vote for a Republican again.
Later, they will branch out from protecting themselves to protecting their donors, by making sure, for example, that those donors never have to worry about committing tax fraud at the expense of the rest of us.
Finally, they will use the need to raise the debt ceiling as an excuse to blow up the economy and attempt to seek even greater, and far more unconstitutional, power in the ensuing catastrophe. This is Donald Trump 101: create a disaster, point fingers at everyone but yourself, and manipulate the circumstances for your benefit. Anyone who thinks we're living in some kind of wonderful post-Trump age is kidding themselves. Donald Trump hasn't gone away. If anything, he's more of a Speaker of the House than McCarthy is.
Which is why Biden and Senate Democrats are wise to refuse McCarthy's invitation to "discuss" the threat that he and his caucus are deliberately manufacturing. One does not negotiate with someone pointing a gun at you. You make it clear that they will either have to pull the trigger, deal with the possibility that you may be able to protect yourself, and wait until they understand that you've called their bluff.
This is how you deal with bullies. I speak from experience. I hope that the Democrats retain and practice this wisdom. The embarrassing opening of the new House of Representatives shows that our future depends on it.
