WE GOT THE ‘SPECTACLE’ WE NEEDED IN JAN. 6 HEARINGS
There is every reason to be skeptical, even cynical, about the effect and impact of the Jan. 6 hearings on the political landscape.
For one thing, most of the details of what happened are already in the public record. We already know that Donald Trump and his allies were engaged in a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election and overturn the constitutional order. We already know that one of their plans was to derail certification of the election by Congress and use the resulting confusion to certify fraudulent electors for Trump instead. We already know that the “stop the steal” rally on the ellipse across from the White House was organized to put pressure on both Republican lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to follow through and “do the right thing,” as Trump put it.
If all of this is already in the public record — if all of it is already part of our public knowledge — why bother with hearings?
The right answer, I think, is spectacle. Most political theater is tedious and partisan. Cheap meat for a hungry base. But there are times when these theatrics can serve a real purpose for the public at large.
In an article in the Fordham Law Review, Josh Chafetz — a law professor at Georgetown — makes a novel distinction between traditional congressional oversight and what he terms congressional “overspeech.”
Oversight is (or at least is supposed to be) about good-faith fact-finding for the sake of public accountability — a central part of Congress’ role as it has developed over time. In this view, Chafetz writes, oversight hearings should be “primarily receptive in nature,” aimed at “drawing out new facts or at least new implications of old facts.”
Overspeech, by contrast, is the “use of the tools of oversight” for performance, spectacle and theatricality. Overspeech is used to communicate directly to the public, to make an argument and to shape its views. It is a form of mass politics, in which “overspeakers” tailor their approach “to the media environment in which they operate” and “shape their behavior as to increase the likelihood of favorable coverage.”
Because it is often partisan, overspeech is also intentionally and deliberately divisive. And while this might seem to put it in conflict with the goal of public persuasion, Chafetz argues that the reality isn’t so simple. “In October 1973, the first votes in the House Judiciary Committee on matters related to impeachment were strong party-line votes,” he writes. “Nine months later, six of the committee’s seventeen Republicans voted for the first article of impeachment.” What started as a partisan issue, he continues, “became something else over time.”
The Jan. 6 hearings should be about more than the facts of the investigation. They should be about the performance of those facts. The hearings, in short, should be a show, aimed directly at the casual viewer who might be too preoccupied with the price of gas or food to pay attention to an ordinary congressional hearing.
Spectacle is what we need and judging from the first night of televised hearings on Thursday, spectacle is what we’re going to get. The members of the committee were direct and sharptongued and they did not shy away from the chaos, disorder and excruciating violence of the insurrection.
There is a larger point to make here as well. For the last year Democrats have struggled to break through to the public; they have struggled to sell their accomplishments, such as they are. But passivity of this sort does nothing but cede the field to one’s opponents.
Because they promise to be an event, the Jan. 6 hearings give President Biden a chance to take another approach: to fan emotion and use conflict, not conciliation, to make his case. There are no guarantees of success, but at the very least, both he and the Democratic Party have a chance to seize the initiative. They should take it.