Editor’s letter

Sen. Markwayne Mullin wants to go back to the good old days, when men were men and members of Congress routinely pummeled each other into bloody oblivion. During a Senate hearing last week, the Oklahoma Republican decided to settle a social media feud with a witness, Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien (see Controversy, p.6). Mullin read out a months-old post in which O’Brien mocked him, then asked if the union boss wanted to “finish it here.” The two men barked challenges at each other until committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, 82, gaveled the would-be pugilists into order. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill that day, Rep. Kevin McCarthy allegedly delivered a sharp elbow to the back of Rep. Tim Burchett, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust him as House speaker last month. (McCarthy denied the claim.) To Mullin, such behavior is part of a noble legislative tradition. Duels and brawls were common in Washington in the 1800s, he told Fox News, adding, “Maybe we should bring some of that back.”

Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman has identified more than 70 incidents from 1831 to 1861 of lawmakers attacking their foes with fists, knives, guns, and canes. They include the 1856 near bludgeoning to death of Sen. Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts abolitionist who was jumped on the Senate floor by a proslavery representative from South Carolina. Two years later, an overnight debate in the House about slavery in Kansas turned into a 50-plus lawmaker donnybrook, with flying spittoons and yanked hairpieces. Those violent eruptions now read like augurs of the looming Civil War. But it’s hard to find any wider meaning in last week’s ugly behavior on Capitol Hill, which was not driven by differences over any substantive issue, just a spreading Trumpish desire to react to any perceived slight with punches. The new combatants in Congress are united only by their battle cry: “You hurt my feelings.”