The Union is strong; our Congress is a mess
Americans settled in for the annual State of the Union address, a mandatory report from the president to Congress on the health of the country, and they heard that the nation’s status is “strong and getting stronger.” Isn’t it always? In recent memory, despite a recession, a pandemic, multiple wars, an addiction crisis, a health care crisis, an immigration crisis, we are told that the union is chugging along because Americans are resilient.
The American people get knocked down but they always get up!
And so, Thursday evening when President Joe Biden dutifully went up to Capitol
Hill, he reported that the nation’s infrastructure is being fixed. He urged Congress to pass legislation to build and renovate more than 2 million homes to reduce housing costs and give more Americans a shot at homeownership. He ballyhooed Obamacare and declared it “still a big deal.” And he issued a warning to those lawmakers who attack women’s bodily autonomy: They will be reprimanded at the ballot box.
The state of the union is fine, but how are its people? Not the social media version of Americans. Not the good Samaritans who start GoFundMe pages for struggling strangers who’ve fallen through our flimsy social safety net or those symbolic citizens representing reproductive freedom, gun control, labor rights and civil rights who were seated with first lady Jill Biden. How are the people at home, at work, at school? How are you?
The president tried mightily to convince the members of his audience that they are doing swell — and if they give him another four years in office, they’ll be doing even better. He conjured a voice that was strong and booming. He joked. He pumped his fist. In the room, on the Democrats’ side of the aisle, lawmakers leaped to their feet and pounded out their applause with indiscriminate gusto. The Republicans sat like stubborn sourpusses eager for the 81-year-old president to stumble. But even though they did as they always do, the members of Congress are not OK.
They are angry and disaffected and speaking ever more in clothes and symbols because legislating has become such a challenge. They’ve exhausted all their words. A host of Democratic women wore white, along with pins proclaiming “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., both wore kaffiyehs, which are closely associated with Palestinian nationalism. They silently held up signs demanding “Lasting Ceasefire Now.” (And outside, activists protested Israel’s war in Gaza and what they view as this country’s complicity.)
On the Republican side, lawmakers couldn’t contain their words. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene defied the chamber’s rules of decorum and wore a bright red baseball cap, one emblazoned with former President Donald Trump’s mantra “Make American Great Again” — because she’s always looking to be MAGA’s most favored child. But she also wore a T-shirt reading “Say Her Name Laken Riley.” The shirt referred to the nursing student who police allege was killed by a man who crossed the southern border illegally. It’s a fine sentiment. The country should not forget Riley.
But the message was muddied by what appeared to be Greene’s cynical repurposing of a plea used by those who were marching for racial justice and police reform in the summer of 2020. And then when Biden discussed immigration and the border security bill that Republicans blocked and actually said Riley’s name, Greene yelled and yelled because that’s what she’d come to do.
Rep. Troy E. Nehls, R-Texas, turned up like he was headed to a Fourth of
July keg party wearing a flag print bow tie and a T-shirt bearing Trump’s mug shot. He had apparently come to belittle the entire process.
But ultimately those in the room are beside the point. The real audience is in the cheap seats outside: In the cities where homeless encampments and busloads of desperate migrants are both enraging and heartbreaking, in towns where fear and embarrassment have folks trying to rewrite history or hide it from future generations, and in picturesque communities where people want to hold back change because an unknown future seems far scarier than a sclerotic present. The American people are a mess. After all, they elected this dysfunctional Congress.
Biden tried to remind Americans of the good. He did so with vigor and intensity. He fended off the hecklers and ignored the shouts of protest. An optimist wants to believe that once the country repairs its bridges and gets everyone logged onto super-fast Wi-Fi, makes billionaires pay up in taxes. and gets prescription drug prices under control, that Americans will be better. That they’ll be able to talk to each other instead of screaming. That they’ll start to believe that elections are fair and not rigged.
Biden reminded the public that he believes in the goodness of the country’s people. That he comes from a generation that defined American values as “honesty, decency, dignity, equality.” It was his way of acknowledging his age while also celebrating it. He’s old enough to remember a time when Americans were good to each other. Such seniority will never be an advantage for a politician. But still, it must be nice.