Round of applause, fellas. There’s a reason Congress has such a low approval rating, and it’s for events of political theater like the one that unfolded Tuesday evening in the U.S. House. Maybe it’s because we’re friendly with partisans of both sides, and they all get fired up about this, but it seems to us that after the initial kerfuffle, this thing should have gone away.
Let’s recap: During President Barack Obama’s health care address, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” from the House floor. It shouldn’t have happened, it allowed a lot of people to throw jokes at his expense and poke fun. Great, that’s fine — he brought it on himself. Then, Wilson called Obama chief of staff and professional ball-breaker Rahm Emanuel to apologize.
Seems like that would work. A two-day story.
But, oh, this is American politics, and one turn deserves another, like a never-ending series of attacks reminiscent of August 1914. Liberals fired back, raising bank for challenger Rob Miller’s campaign. Wilson’s people countered, developing T-shirts and doing fundraising of their own. There were demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. There were clowns. Add into the mix an endless amount of sniping over the Internet.
What is the Democratic majority to do? We thought it was great that the Democrats picked a woman as its first speaker of the house in 12 years. Not so happy that it was Nancy Pelosi. For one reason or another, she never struck us as someone that you’d want in the leadership. But, it is what it is.
Sprinkle into the mix some classic South Carolina battles. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn commented in a story recently that he was none too happy that Wilson held a town hall meeting at Keenan High School, in the Sixth District. Whether that was a part of it or not, it was reported by a Politico reporter on C-SPAN today that Pelosi wasn’t initially behind the idea of a resolution, and it was Clyburn who lobbied for the resolution.
So, there we were, ’round 5 p.m., watching the House going through the roll call vote. In the end, the resolution passed, 240-179. Expect a continuing amount of warring against the 12 Democrats that voted against and the seven Republicans that voted for the resolution, including U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, who is in a tough primary fight to save his seat.
The play was called by the Democrats, so we’ll analyze what they could, or could not have done, in the situation. There are a number of factors to take into consideration, but it should be split on external and internal lines.
Externally speaking, they should have let it go. Yeah, let the netroots and the grassroots and every other roots complain and raise money and put up blog posts and hold rallies. They do that pretty well. Have the House Caucus issue a statement saying that you deplore the congressman’s actions, but respect his apology, and that it’s the party’s intention to move on and pass meaningful health care reform. Done. The House Dems look good, and seem like they have their eyes on the ball. May cost with the die-hards, but they’re never happy, anyway.
Internally speaking, Pelosi had to act. House Democrats watched for eight years while they saw Republicans hold the line for President George W. Bush. If the Dems didn’t do something that is ultimately a pretty petty thing, it would seem like they were weak. And, this is Washington politics — it’s like the African plains. The weak get eaten by the lions. Also, it was a way of telling Obama that the House has his back. Internal politics, it can be a bastard.
And so it is. In the insular, high school-like world of Capitol Hill, the House Dems didn’t have perspective — at least, that’s the way it looks from South Carolina. They did a very red meat thing in the middle of debating one of the biggest issues of the last century.
So, here we go again. This story will probably run another week or two before the next scandal or catastrophe, and there will be more claims of Marxism and racism thrown around and maybe, at some point, we can finally get to the bottom of the health care problem in our country.
But that didn’t happen today.
