President Trump’s House of Pain

With the political madness of recent weeks — the shutdown and the smackdowns, the incitements and the indictments — it’s easy to forget there is much actual governing to be done by the new Congress: bills to introduce, nominees to consider and, for House Democrats in particular, oversight of the executive branch to conduct. Major oversight.

Attempting to hold this administration to account will be among the new Democratic majority’s most vital, and most fraught, duties — especially after two years of cowed Republicans letting the president operate unchecked. A White House has perhaps never more vividly demonstrated the need for some countervailing force to check its corruption and incompetence, its disdain for the Constitution and its assault on democratic norms.

But precisely because there are so many legitimate avenues of inquiry, Democrats must proceed with caution to avoid looking as if they’re piling on in a punitive or grossly partisan manner. While many Democrats and not a few anti-trump Republicans would doubtless be delighted to see the president subjected to daily investigative torture, House Democrats cannot afford to alienate the independents and swing voters needed to send him packing in 2020. A new Washington POST-ABC News poll shows that a plurality of independents already expect the new House majority to go overboard with its oversight, and even some Democratic lawmakers have expressed unease. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-KY., the new Budget Committee chairman, recently joked that Congress would “have to build an air traffic control tower to keep track of all the subpoenas flying from here to the White House.”

Eager to fuel this perception, Team Trump has been smearing Democrats as engaged in a campaign of “presidential harassment.” It’s the president’s signature move: attack anyone or anything that displeases him — the news media, the courts, the electoral process, insufficiently obsequious Republicans, his own Department of Justice, science — to undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of his base.

Democrats insist they understand the risks. Conference leaders and key committee members have been preparing to take the oversight reins since the opening months of Trump’s tenure. They have held weekly strategy meetings to chart an investigative course focused less on the personal sins of the president than on the harm wrought by his administration’s atrocious policies and operational fecklessness.

To avert an investigative free-for-all, Democrats decided early on that they needed to prioritize their inquiries within a basic narrative framework: How is misbehavior X endangering the health and safety of our democracy or of the American people?

Issues ranking high on Democrats’ inquiry list include the administration’s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico; its decisions not to defend the pre-existing conditions provision of Obamacare and to undermine the program by starving it of funds; its policy of separating migrant families at the southern border; and its rollback of environmental protections.

Other prime lines of inquiry are whether former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke stood to benefit personally from decisions he made in office, whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied to Congress about his efforts to add a question about citizenship to the new census — and pretty much every decision made so far by Education Secretary Betsy Devos. Such potential maladministration may not be as buzzy as, say, exploring whether Trump paid hush money to former mistresses or underpaid his taxes by a few hundred million dollars. But it does concretely influence the health and well-being of the public.

This is not to say Trump will get a pass on his personal behavior, simply that Democrats will try to keep the focus on the bigger picture. For instance, Trump’s continued refusal to release his tax returns is part of his family’s sketchy financial dealings, which raise serious questions about everything from emoluments violations to inappropriate dealings with foreign interests. The crucial question isn’t whether the president has violated the law but whether he has been selling out the nation for personal gain.

That said, Democrats say they plan to leave the Russia digging largely to special counsel Robert Mueller. They are aware that interfering with his investigation in any way could damage both their efforts and his.

With a House Democratic caucus this big — and this fired up — it can be tough to keep members on message. But Democratic leaders have been working since early 2017 to put processes in place to maximize order and unity. The heads of committees coordinate their inquiries to present a united front and to avoid stepping on one another’s toes. Leadership has been aggressively pushing the message that the most effective way for rank-and-file members to pursue possible misdeeds by the administration is to work with senior members of the appropriate committees.

Inevitably, individual members will go rogue now and again. Rep. Al Green of Louisiana has signed on to Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer’s impeachment crusade, despite party leadership’s commitment to steer clear of the “I” word for now. And freshman Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s vulgar call to impeach the president set off self-righteous outrage among Republicans and hand-wringing among some of her Democratic colleagues.

Democrats are looking to stay disciplined enough with their oversight mission to convey a sense of order amid the chaos. Just this week, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, publicly praised the chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat, for ushering in “a new era of bipartisanship” with his restrained use of subpoenas and his commitment to “an unprecedented level of transparency.” Likewise, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, praised the pledge of the committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, to handle subpoenas in a collaborative manner.

It’s a promising start.

Attempting to hold this administration to account will be among the new Democratic majority’s most vital, and most fraught, duties.