BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
What were they thinking?
The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration last month turned an official hearing on a serious issue—migrant farm labor—into a 3-ring circus starring comedian Stephen Colbert. Colbert didn’t even testify, he performed a comedy routine as a character from his television show, mocking farm workers, immigrants and the U.S. Congress.
The Colbert comedy performance left absolutely no doubt why the American people are disgusted with Congress and some of those who serve there.
The Chairman of the Subcommittee, Zoe Lofgren of California apparently refused a request from the full Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to prevent Colbert from performing. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted calling Colbert’s routine “great.”
What were they thinking?
The Congress is an institution that belongs to the American people. It is the embodiment of our heritage and our history. What has transpired on the floors of the House and Senate and in the committee rooms over the past 220 years has guided and governed the greatest nation in history and at times done so as the greatest deliberative body in history. The halls of Congress have echoed the genius of James Madison, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Thomas Hart Benton, Abraham Lincoln, Robert LaFollette, Hubert Humphrey, Daniel Moynihan, and Everett Dirksen.
The Congress for years has been derelict in its duty under both Democrats and Republicans to lift our country out of recession and economic stagnation, out of the clutches of foreign energy producers, out of the mediocrity of an educational system that can’t even produce a competitive workforce, out of the social and economic paralysis of immigration. Congress can’t even produce an annual budget or pass a single appropriation bill.
The country is faced with problems that are rapidly turning into crises. At a time when public confidence and public trust are absolutely essential to resolving the issues we face, the Congress, which is the first and foremost repository of the public trust, turns a committee room into a Sunset Strip night club.
The Colbert incident would be meaningless in isolation (he wasn’t even funny), but it is reflective of something much more profound–the chronic degree of incivility and lack of simple decency and respect that have become the rule of political behavior in America. It has become too easy to ridicule and repudiate, to engage in character assassination and to demean and destroy our social, economic and political institutions. In politics, there are no penalties for being a bully or a crackpot.
House Republican Leader John Boehner gave a reasoned and reflective speech one week after the Colbert buffoonery on what Republicans would do to reform the House if they win the majority in November. He understands the challenges of governance. It was a good speech with good ideas, a lot of them. But there was no mention of the incivility and the mean spirited divisiveness that have plagued the institution and made governing practically impossible for more than a decade. The reality is that partisanship is not what’s wrong with Congress. What’s wrong is that partisanship has turned personal and ugly.
Legislators find themselves in the atmosphere of a losing locker room because congressional leaders have tolerated and in some cases exhibited behavior that violates those basic human, familial, community, religious values of mutual respect and decency, compassion and forgiveness, that those same leaders espouse with rhetorical flourishes that would make Elmer Gantry blush. And the media encourage them. Gridlock is good for business.
The leadership of the 112th Congress won’t be able to meet the incredible public expectations that are being forged in this election if the people are not instilled with a renewed respect for Congress as an institution. They will never feel that respect if the men and women who serve there don’t have it, and if those members of Congress, new and old, aren’t willing to protect the institution from abuse.
The restoration of civility in Congress is the only possible path to consensus and consensus is the only possible path to resolution of the enormous challenges the new Congress will face.
There’s nothing funny about it.
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.