Attack brings comity, maybe brief, to Capital
WASHINGTON — The two teams trotted out together at Nationals Park and knelt briefly in prayer near second base, their fans in the stands intermingling red and blue, united in a certainty that the game must go on — just not quite as it had before.
A day earlier, on another ballfield some 7 miles southwest, a gunman had opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team, striking four people — including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives — who were there for a practice.
And on Thursday, the capital’s various institutional forces — senators and lobbyists, staff members with a job to do and residents with an evening to spare — joined, for a moment, in a bipartisan rebuttal: Play ball.
Near the dugout, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump bantered with Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate’s top Democrat. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, wore a shirt from Louisiana State University, Scalise’s alma mater.
And when a video message from President Donald Trump played on the big screen, the assembled Democrats in the crowd booed less lustily than usual.
“You are showing the world that we will not be intimidated,” Trump said. “The game will go on.”
Earlier, at the Capitol, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said he hadn’t planned to stay for the game. Lewis, the 77-year-old civil rights leader, spoke of 1968 and of the political violence he had seen up close, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
He stared straight ahead for a moment. “I have to stay,” he said softly.
Seemingly unchanged
All day, before as many as 20,000 ticketholders filed in, the shorthand for other tragedies ricocheted through the Capitol.
Giffords. Newtown. Orlando.
At work Thursday, those pangs visited lawmakers like a too-familiar houseguest — stalking them down the Capitol’s corridors, past the Senate chamber where a ferocious health care debate had already resumed, along the hall where some had stood one day earlier as survivors, still in dusted cleats and uniforms, unharmed but unsettled.
The reaction would be different this time, some said. More sustainable. It had to be. Probably. Maybe. Right? “What’s the half-life?” asked Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., appraising how long the comity might last. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The skepticism is nearuniversal. Even a day removed from the initial anguish, much of the political ecosystem seemed unchanged.
In a Thursday morning tweet, Trump railed against the “WITCH HUNT” of investigations of his associates. Lawmakers accused one another, although perhaps a bit more gently than usual, of hypocrisy and selective memory on matters of policy.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was warming up with Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, who is not known for bipartisan spirit.
Pelosi could not resist suggesting that Republicans were the initiators of the present rancor.
“Somewhere in the ‘90s, Republicans decided on a politics of personal destruction as they went after the Clintons,” she told reporters earlier Thursday.
Moments later, she added, a bit regretfully: “I really am almost sad for myself that I have gone down this path with you, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to have the fullest discussion of it. It’ll be for another day.”
‘I hope it lasts’’
But for an optimist in the city — and there still seem to be a few — there were flourishes to appreciate.
House interns hauled signs: “Scalise Strong,” “Capitol Police MVP” and “Undivided” in red, white and blue.
Another attendee delivered this message, held aloft: “This Democrat is here to support Congressman Scalise. Get well soon, sir.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, planned to wear a “Team Scalise” shirt to the game at Washington’s Nationals Park. Pelosi was expected to sit for an interview alongside Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. The Senate leaders — Schumer and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — were set to do the same.
“We’re just one day removed, so it still feels different, I think, for me,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a team member who raced to Scalise’s side to provide water and first aid after the shooting Wednesday morning at a ballfield in suburban Virginia. “I hope it lasts.”
He said he had spoken Wednesday with former President Barack Obama, who passed along his wellwishes to Scalise. The two discussed Obama’s remarks in Tucson in 2011 after the shooting of thenRep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
“We were talking about that, that this was kind of déjà vu,” Flake said.
He set out a goal for himself and his colleagues, uttered before inside the Capitol. “One thing we can do is, ourselves, tone down our own rhetoric and not ascribe the worst motives to our colleagues,” he said.
“That can be done.”