I have been harping quite a bit recently on the remarkable incompetence of our current Congress. Not just the open hostility to getting things done, but the plain
inability to do anything of merit, even when the Republican majority of the House actually wants it done. The most recent example was the payroll tax cut extension, in which the House horrified even themselves in their spasms over whether or not to kill it while praising it, or extend it while condemning it. The debt ceiling, indefinitely filibustered appointments to the federal bench and other key positions, the obsession with deficits and austerity while all but ignoring unemployment and the recession: You could argue partisanship and mean-spritedness, on the part of the House and Senate, but do not sell short the notion of an underlying, outright incompetence.
There was a long time when I was convinced that the problem with the House GOP was just mean-spiritedness. Government cannot possibly do anything more to help the poor, because that would be socialism, but we continue to send supertankers full of money to Wall Street and other gilded industries—that is the purest form of trickle-down economics, which is the political term for self-centered greed, and that certainly counts as mean.
But the debt ceiling debacle, in which no amount of presidential concession was enough, and whose eventual, ridiculous resolution was mourned by a large contingent of the House that really, really had wanted to see the entire government burn down out of spite, began to strongly suggest that there was no backstop of mean-sprited cleverness on the part of the perpetrators. The subsequent failure of Super Congress (snicker) and the payroll tax cut extension served only to solidify the notion. This isn't a Congress that is too ideological or too conservative or too active or too lazy or too anything. This is a Congress that is, more than anything else, just inept. Incompetent, buffoonish, ignorant, misinformed, spiteful—take your pick. The battle in this Congress is not just whether we will go in one ideological direction or another; the battle has commonly devolved, during the last two years, into protracted efforts over competently executing the basic functions of government at all.
(Un)fortunately, those of us shaking our heads at the sheer incompetence of the current Congress have a bit of backup. You know things are bad in Congress when historians (notably and inexplicably absent: world-renowned historian Newt Gingrich) struggle to identify times when it might have been worse:
In modern history, [Brookings Institution senior fellow Thomas Mann] says, "there have been battles, delays, brinkmanship — but nothing quite like this." [...]
Mann acknowledges there have been worse times for Congress, but he reaches back a very long way for a comparison.
"There were a few really bruising periods in American congressional history, not only the run-up to the Civil War, but also around the War of 1812," he says.
So, the worst Congress since the run-up to the Civil War, you say?
"I think you'd have to go back to the 1850s to find a period of congressional dysfunction like the one we're in today," says Daniel Feller, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Tennessee.
Feller, who specializes in the Jacksonian, Antebellum and Civil War periods, points specifically to 1849-1860 when Congress sometimes struggled for months to even elect a speaker of the House.
So, the worst Congress since the run-up to the Civil War, you say? Oh dear.
"There have been plenty of times when the rhetorical heat has been high, sometimes higher than now," Feller says. "What's most amazing today is not fiery words, but the inability to do necessary business."
Knowing this Congress, however, they'll take this as a complement. We're history-making, they'll say. Then to commemorate it they'll cut Medicare in order to pay for a solid platinum statue of Eric Cantor yelling at someone.
Still, this is only a few historians. I think the topic needs more discussion. I'd like to propose a network-televised symposium in which America's historians discuss, at great length, whether or not this Congress is the most incompetent Congress America has had since before the Civil War.
For more discussion, see the diary by Christian Dem in NC.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:
The right wing blogs and Drudge are beside themselves that Harry Reid won't attend Iraq war and Bush Administration critic and former president Gerald Ford's funeral.
Seems that Bush was off galavanting around the world and missed Ronald Reagan's funeral.
Bush, who is on vacation, missed Reagan's service in the Capitol, too, because he was attending a G-8 summit.
I don't remember right-wingers hyperventilating over that one. And Reagan is their patron saint.
And having missed that one, the vacationing Bush is in no hurry to get back for Ford's commemorative ceremonies.
President Bush will not attend weekend ceremonies including a Capitol Rotunda service, but he will return to Washington from his Texas ranch on Monday, pay respects to Ford while his remains lie in state at the Capitol, and speak Tuesday at services for Ford at the National Cathedral.
Reid and his bipartisan group of Senators are on a diplomatic and trade mission. Bush is "clearing brush" or whatever down in Crawford. He didn't cut one of his vacations short for Katrina. He sure as heck ain't gonna cut it short for former President Ford.
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