Some of them are apparently taking a page out of the Preston Brooks playbook — you do NOT want to be taking a page out of the Preston Brooks playbook; it is a bad playbook — and whaling on one another openly, or threatening to? (That can’t be the right spelling of “whaling,” can it?) Do you know what happened to the country after Preston Brooks started hitting Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the Senate? It was not good, that’s for sure.
The last thing we need right now is to see a headline like “Congressman Jabs Opponent” or “Congressman Pushes Back” or “Congressman Fights Potential Nominees” and be UNABLE TO TELL WHETHER IT CONTAINS METAPHORS. Do you know what a devastating impact this would have on the day-to-day vocabulary of congressional correspondents? Now, every time I see a member of Congress is making a motion to the floor, or, worse, a motion to table, I will be nervous. Motions to vacate the chair will seem even more ominous!
Once you let the metaphor out, it doesn’t come back in so easily. It is like a bagged cat that way.
Are we going to start getting fundraising emails from our elected representatives with subject lines like: “THE FIRST RULE OF CONGRESSIONAL FIGHT CLUB” and body text like, “Dear Constituent, I need protective garb if I’m going to be able to legislate! It’s a ‘Mad Max’ situation on the floor of the Senate, and if I want to get my bill out of Appropriations, I’m going to have to fight it out!”
“P.S. Please don’t tell Kevin McCarthy I talked about Fight Club; I am not supposed to!”
Is this yet another thing I am going to have to worry about when sending people to Congress — that they will have to be able to hold their own if other lawmakers come at them from behind with a folding chair?
Come on. This is not the criteria I want to consider when electing someone to represent me in the nation’s legislature. I think we have been selecting for the wrong skill set for some time now, sending the people most enraged by the notion that Congress occasionally passes legislation. I understand that many lawmakers are not there to pass legislation and that they need other ways to spend time. But I never thought they would start physically challenging one another.
“If I kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground. … Let’s be realistic,” McCarthy, formerly speaker of the House, actually told reporters after Burchett claimed McCarthy elbowed him in the back. To adapt a line from Gore Vidal, “Once again, Kevin McCarthy fails at speaking.” He is just pushing — specifically Burchett.
I understand that there are limits to using your words, and that, for many of these congressmen, those limits are reached early. And an uncharitable but fair thing you could say about this Congress is that it is like you threw a party and the theme was “collect in a room all the people least likely to legislate.” But come on.
I look away from Congress for one fraction of an instant and suddenly they are carrying on like a Hieronymus Bosch painting? This is Congress now? I am tired.
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