Enough misleading about Congress
By: Elizabeth Drew
Politico.com
September 7, 2010
It's time to retire the overused — and inaccurate — words "dysfunctional" and "paralysis" that have appeared in a recent spate of articles and commentary propagating the fashionable view that the current Congress has gotten little or even nothing done. In fact, this has been one of the most productive Congresses in decades.
Making sport of Congress has a long tradition. Speaker Nicholas Longworth, an Ohio Republican, said in 1925 that he had been a member of Congress for 20 years, but "during the whole of that time we have been attacked, denounced, despised, hunted, harried, blamed, looked down upon, excoriated, and flayed. I refuse to take it personally ... we have always been unpopular. From the beginning of the Republic, it has been the duty of every free-born voter to look down upon us and the duty of every free-born humorist to make jokes at us."
Indeed, it's hard for Congress to get respect. The oddballs and loudmouths get disproportionate attention, and there are more of them as the parties and their most intense followers have moved further to the extremes and with the advent of cable television with more time to fill. Thoughtful members of Congress — and there are many of them — don't make for "good television," and neither does a complicated argument. Sound bites don't last more than 10 or 15 seconds. The convoluted and antique practices of the Hill also do little to increase legislative credibility. But what difference does it make to the nation's welfare that, as one recently made a point of, in a bow to tradition, the Senate keeps two (unused) spittoons in the front of the chamber?
(More here.)
Politico.com
September 7, 2010
It's time to retire the overused — and inaccurate — words "dysfunctional" and "paralysis" that have appeared in a recent spate of articles and commentary propagating the fashionable view that the current Congress has gotten little or even nothing done. In fact, this has been one of the most productive Congresses in decades.
Making sport of Congress has a long tradition. Speaker Nicholas Longworth, an Ohio Republican, said in 1925 that he had been a member of Congress for 20 years, but "during the whole of that time we have been attacked, denounced, despised, hunted, harried, blamed, looked down upon, excoriated, and flayed. I refuse to take it personally ... we have always been unpopular. From the beginning of the Republic, it has been the duty of every free-born voter to look down upon us and the duty of every free-born humorist to make jokes at us."
Indeed, it's hard for Congress to get respect. The oddballs and loudmouths get disproportionate attention, and there are more of them as the parties and their most intense followers have moved further to the extremes and with the advent of cable television with more time to fill. Thoughtful members of Congress — and there are many of them — don't make for "good television," and neither does a complicated argument. Sound bites don't last more than 10 or 15 seconds. The convoluted and antique practices of the Hill also do little to increase legislative credibility. But what difference does it make to the nation's welfare that, as one recently made a point of, in a bow to tradition, the Senate keeps two (unused) spittoons in the front of the chamber?
(More here.)
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