BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Freedom of speech and press keep the blood flowing through public discourse. But sometimes they are not all they’re cracked up to be.
A good example is Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post May 2, in which he excoriated House Republicans for not getting anything done. “It’s another recess week for our lazy leaders,” he wrote. “They are planning to be on vacation—er, doing “constituent work”—17 of the year’s remaining 34 weeks, and even when they are in town (Washington) the typical workweek is three days.”
Milbank is way off base on several counts and on balance, contributes more to the ignorance of his readers than their enlightenment, which you would think would be one of the key tests of whether a responsible news outlet prints or broadcasts anything broadly categorized as news or news commentary. In other words does what is printed or broadcast contribute to the public good; that is more the education than the entertainment of the people the media are trying to help govern themselves?
Someone once said that the First Amendment guarantees to Americans the right to make a damn fool of themselves, but it doesn’t require them to do so. By the same token, there’s nothing in the First Amendment that says the Washington Post is required to print the drivel that sometimes drips form the pen of Dana Milbank or other strident partisans and ideologues like him—Norm Ornstein immediately comes to mind after his similar diatribe on Republican rule in the Post.
To Milbank’s misfired shots, Members of Congress don’t go on vacation one week out of every month. They are on a legislative schedule that, thanks to House Speaker John Boehner, permits them to spend more time among their constituents. That is one of the fundamental responsibilities of members and, it could be argued, a more important responsibility than legislating itself. The Founding Fathers thought it critical that members of Congress stay in constant contact with their constituents, live among them, ‘think as they think’, and act as they would want them to act. You can’t do that going home on quickie weekend trips when most of your constituents are not accessible.
Members of Congress on “vacation”? Balderdash. I spent thirteen years traveling the 18th District of Illinois with Congressman Bob Michel from Peoria. Most of those 10-12 hour days were spent with farmers at feed mills, churchgoers at picnics, laborers on the assembly line and barbers in their shops, among many others. Nobody knew more about how Peorians thought or what they wanted from their government than Bob Michel–well, maybe with the possible exception of his district director, Ray LaHood, who succeeded him.
Nothing has changed. After reading Milbank’s column I contacted chiefs of staff for members from Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, Arizona, and California and asked them what their members were doing last week and every one of those members was in the District, conducting small business conferences, job fairs, nursing home visits, speaking to high school students and meeting with professions from real estate to pharmacology.
When it comes to the cold statistical on bills passed and days in session, on which Milbank makes his case, you can paint a picture that the 112th Congress hasn’t done anything. But the statistics mean little if they aren’t put in context.
To draw from the famous line in the movie Absence of Malice it’s accurate, but not true. The numbers don’t describe the work of Congress, they distort it, particularly in the total absence of the legislative work done in committees.
The incessant partisan bickering that Milbank seems to enjoy fomenting, sucks the oxygen from the more important debates to which the citizenry need more exposure. People need to know the real causes of political dysfunction and they need to know of its chronic nature and how difficult but urgent it is to purge it from the political system.
The blame for the breakdown of our governmental processes cannot be ascribed to either party, or either house of Congress or any branch of government unilaterally. They’re all culpable, and no more so than the media.
The blame can spread far and wide. Dysfunctional, divisive and uncivil politics, from campaigning to governing, reflects a pattern of social and political misbehavior that runs the gamut from “reality” television to super PAC campaign ads, and every attempt by political candidates, media pundits and political opportunists in and out of government, to divide us into distinct classes of victims and villains and getting us snapping at each other.
Granted, Congress is not generating governmental action that satisfies anyone, but last week most members were all over the country doing what they were supposed to do; they weren’t bellowing from the ivory towers in which Milbank resides. They were on the streets listening to confused, angry, and frustrated constituents who continue to suffer the brunt of gradations of political dysfunction now 20 years or more in the making, and still don’t understand why.
Who can blame them? No one is really telling them why, particularly you know who.
Editor’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.