Time for a good buddy tale
WASHINGTON — Americans needed a good buddy movie after a deranged gunman targeted Republicans practicing for a bipartisan ballgame to raise money for charities
Wednesday morning.
The attack left House Majority
Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., in critical condition and sent others to the hospital, including Capitol Hill police officers Crystal Griner and David
Bailey, who fought off the shooter even after he wounded them.
So while Griner and Bailey recovered, Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Michael Doyle, D-Pa., — managers of the rival Republican and Democratic teams — showed Americans a side of Congress voters rarely see on the news: partisans who disagree but are still friends.
Neither Doyle nor Barton used the violence to make a political point. Barton told "PBS NewsHour," "We have an R or D by our name, but our title is United States Representative."
Thursday, President Donald Trump wondered if Scalise "in his own way may have brought some unity to our longdivided country."
Can something good happen from something so wrong? Doyle suggested a path toward civility. "When people see their leaders being uncivil toward one another, then you see the public being uncivil toward one another and toward their leaders."
He wasn't blaming anyone for the lone-wolf shooter's rampage. He was acknowledging how Americans look at Congress — and what members can do to restore their image. A recent Gallup poll found that 20 percent of Americans approve of Congress, while 74 percent disapprove. And that's up from December 2013 when fewer than 10 percent of voters approved of Congress.
Mark Harkins, senior fellow of the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, blames the jet airplane. Since the 1970s, as air travel became more ubiquitous, House members have gotten to know each other less and treat each other worse.
Congressmen and women often spend so little time in Washington, said Harkins, a former staffer for House Democrats, that they talk to each other like users of "an internet chatroom."
Harkins noted that more than half of House members have been in Congress for less than eight years. Today's congressmen and women, he said, "don't have houses here. They don't bring their families here — for the fear of seeming to have 'gone Washington.'"
House Speaker Paul Ryan built his image as an antiWashington frugal spender because he slept on a cot in his office and showered in the House gym. This is a model for many lawmakers who say their $174,000 salary cannot support two homes.
Voters may well think that's a good thing. After all, who wants an elected representative more beholden to the machine than the people who sent him or her to Washington?
The downside of the new order, however, is that members feel little loyalty to the institution they serve. They run for Congress trashing Congress, just as Trump ran for president promising to "drain the swamp" that is D.C.
They visit their districts most weekends. They fly into