Tag: congress

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Once or For All

Some moments freeze the frame. With shock. With disbelief. With the sudden awareness that you’re living in History with a capital “H.”

The last flight of the Challenger.

The morning the Twin Towers fell.

Wednesday.

The images from the Capitol felt surreal – and yet too real. Something that could have come from a movie or a Tom Clancy novel, and yet something that could have only happened in the far-too-real world.

Something that’s ours. Whether we want it or not.

As I write this, it’s been three days since the storming of Congress. We’ve seen and heard so much – the evacuation of Congress and delay of the vote, the staffers whose quick thinking got the ballot boxes to safety, the bizarre sights from the broken-into chambers and offices. We’ve heard the shouts and screams since, seen the calls for accountability, witnessed the beginnings of consequences in the real and online worlds.

By the time this appears in print, another two days will have passed. An eternity. Because the weird thing about frozen-frame moments is they move surprisingly quickly in their aftermath, fast enough to make even the most prescient observations quickly obsolete.
So I’m taking a step back from the immediate. And asking a bigger question.

What do we want this to be?

Not “How do we spin this?” Not “How do we assign blame?” Not even “How do we get in a DeLorean and prevent this from happening,” though I wish that were an option.

No. What will this be?

I’ll explain.

One of my own frozen-frame moments – one for many of us, I suspect – goes back more than 20 years to the mass shooting at Columbine High School. My mother was still a teacher at the time at a school with a very similar name, which meant that as I watching events unfold in a Kansas newsroom, I was also having to reassure friends that she was OK, that she wasn’t at that Columbine.

It was a punch in the gut. And for some years afterward, any fresh report of a major school shooting hit that wound. More than once, I went to the keyboard to pour out the pain of what had happened, to try to understand, to try to be even the smallest part of helping our country say “Never again” and mean it.

Well.

You know the rest.

They kept coming. They became so common that I couldn’t write about every single one. It took the classroom dispersals of COVID-19 to interrupt the string – March 2020 was the first March without a school shooting since 2002.

So common that it began to numb.

And the frame kept freezing a little less.

So I ask again – what will Wednesday be?

Will it be a 9/11, a one-time horror that leaves an impact but no immediate sequel?  

Or will it be a Columbine, merely the first of a chain?

Ultimately, that’s up to us.

A professor of mine, Simone Chambers, once said the fundamental principle of politics is that talking is better than fighting. It’s a simple concept to state and an easy one to abandon. After all, a conversation takes two willing people. Conflicts, like car accidents, require only one behaving badly.

Can we commit to talking? To listening? To hearing?

That doesn’t mean being a milquetoast, rolling over rather than risk offense. If anything, it requires the courage to stand up to folks who would trample on the conversation and say “No. We don’t do that here.”

Conflict is not unique to this time and place. American politics has never been an episode of Masterpiece Theatre. But we have been better. We can be. We must.

Freeze the moment again. Examine it.

And then, together, let’s decide what we want to learn.

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Letter Be

By the time this appears in print, Gil’s letter should be almost ready to arrive.

Gil is my stunningly brilliant 6-year-old nephew. (No, it’s not short for Gilbert, and yes, my sister is an Anne of Green Gables fan.) He’s a budding student of the sciences, who once casually pointed out landmarks on the moon and Mars to me during an imaginary space odyssey. His busy hands have built long, elaborate marble runs, followed by long painstaking videos depicting the “races” between the marbles as they swerve and roll.

And now Mister Gil has discovered the epistolary art.

“Dear Anut Heathr/Uncle Scott/Missy,” he opened in carefully handwritten crayon, with animal and robot stickers decorating each line. “Wut things are you doing? And wut book are you reading? How is the weather? Please wriet back.”

My own response is finally ready for him. I say “finally” because … well, this is an admission that doesn’t come easily to a professional writer. This is between you, me, and a few thousand other readers, OK?

The fact is, I’m terrible at personal letters.

I know, it doesn’t make much sense. I’ve been a columnist for years. I can write news stories and PR pieces easily. And I’m quick to jump on emails, social media, and all the other communications tools of the 21st century. Easy.

But good old-fashioned mail? Too often, my brain resembles a kindergarten playground, trying to get everyone to line up properly and get back to class. “Oh, yeah, I need to send that reply out … oh, wait, we’re out of envelopes, I’ll pick some up at the store tomorrow … huh, the old envelope got recycled, I’d better email Carey for the address … OK, I know I have stamps around here somewhere …. “

If this all took place in one sitting, it might not be so bad. But each gets punctuated with occasions of Life Happening and soon “Scott’s Correspondence” has become the next long-running miniseries, complete with episodic cliffhangers. (“Will Scott and his envelope make it to the post office in the same trip?”)

Nonetheless … we’re doing this. Because it’s important to Gil. And therefore it’s important to us.

He’s learning. And all of us in the family want to encourage that. So we write. We click on his YouTube videos. We keep an eye out for books and toys that’ll fuel his interests even further. And we smile as he constantly finds more for us to encourage.

After all, when you reward behavior, you tend to see more of it.

That’s true for most people, whether we’re talking 6-year-olds or congressmen. Oh, granted, the 6-year-olds usually aren’t as stubborn and willful as the politicians (I blame a lack of regular naps and the occasional time-out), but the principles are the same. Communicate. Show up. Be clear. Encourage. Don’t stop. Packing a town hall or filling up a voice mail box may not be as cute as attending a school program, but it’s part of the same idea.

Smart politicians know this. The ones that forget sometimes become unemployed politicians.

And the best part is, it shapes you too. It makes you a better voter. A better relative. Maybe even a better letter-writer.

What you touch, touches you. And both can be better for the experience.

If you’re lucky, you’ll even get some cool robot stickers out of the deal.

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Getting in the Gears

The story might be apocryphal. I’ve noticed that the best ones often are. But true or not, it’s still worth telling.

When I was in school, I saw an illustration that has been part of many a civics lesson: namely, the U.S. government as three gears. One toothed wheel was supposed to be the legislative branch, another was the executive branch, and the last was the courts, all of it interconnecting to make a fine machine.

Well, according to the story, someone decided to build a working model of the illustration. They created each gear as described in the drawing, brought them together exactly as shown. Then, when everything was ready, the would-be civics engineer threw the switch.

And the gears promptly jammed.

Whoever had drawn it had been better at cartooning than engineering. As shown, the parts of the “machine” did nothing but work against each other, struggling to progress a single inch.

Yeah. I’m with you. Looking at the last several years – heck, at my lifetime – the artist may have been more accurate than they intended.

The latest version of the illustration has been in the news for all to see, the grounding of the new administration’s executive order on travel. Executive orders are a pretty sweeping power, especially with the extensive bureaucracy that the U.S. has built over the years, and it’s one that has made me nervous no matter who wields it. There’s a lot of power to bypass the normal legislative process there, simply by one man saying “yes.”

But as the courts have proved, it’s not an absolute power. If even a few judges think an action has gone too far for the Constitution’s comfort, they can bring down their gavels, and the gears jam.

I’m sure it’s a frustrating thing for a president to watch. Especially for one used to a privately-held business, where the boss is the boss is the boss, with no shareholders or competing power centers to interfere with the latest initiative.

But frustrating or not, that’s the design. And it’s one with a lot of history (and no small amount of paranoia) behind it.

The Founders didn’t necessarily want a government that did nothing. They’d had a lot of that during the Articles of Confederation, to the point where the U.S was more a loose alliance of quasi-independent states than an actual nation. But they knew too well, or could visualize too clearly, what could happen if any one power center got too effective.

They knew about kings going off on their own. Or Parliaments becoming the center of action. And they certainly had their share of fears about the mob rule that could develop if the people started taking everything into their own hands.

And so, whether by fear, design, lucky chance, or all three, they built a system whose watchword was interdependence. Each piece needed the others, each had a way to stop or slow down something they didn’t like.

It doesn’t sound very efficient. And it’s not, if what you’re trying to produce is action.

But what if the machine’s meant to make something else?

This is a system that requires listening. Conversation. Negotiation. Everyone has to account for each other, no one gets to be left in a corner. When some of the sides are feeling obstreperous, it can mean that very little gets done – but over time, that inaction can prove its own cure, requiring some level of cooperation to do anything at all.

It reinforces one of the oldest political adages: “No one gets everything he wants.” Some folks can get an awful lot out of the machine, but even the best get cooled down by nervousness or jealousy or competing agendas. And sometimes, the machine seems determined to sit and rust, but as the computer engineers like to say, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. A failsafe, if you will.

It’s meant to work, without working too well.

Gears can jam. Or gears can mesh. It all depends on how well people listen, and how willing they are to account for each other.

If the answer is “not well” – then welcome to the old grind.

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Up And At ‘Em

For Missy, all the world’s a trampoline.

It starts with a smile, a sudden drop, and a shout to the skies. With no effort, Missy’s thin, tiny body falls backward onto an armchair, onto a sofa, onto the bed. BOOMF! She strikes the cushion and springs back up again, standing right where she was and ready to do it all over again.

“Wooooo!”

Her face brilliant in its glee, she’ll repeat the bounce twice, three times, still more. It’s contagious, really. By the second or third bounce, I’m usually laughing and cheering along with her – well, as long as the armchair hasn’t been slammed TOO hard against the wall.

“Yeah!!”

It’s not hard to understand the source of the excitement, or some of it anyway. Missy, my wife’s aunt who is my age by the calendar and much younger in mind and heart, has disabilities that keep her moving through life at a careful walk, often balanced on a wall, a chair, or someone’s arm. But when she free-falls, none of that matters. All at once, she can really move. Heck, she can practically fly.

“Look, lookit!”

When she’s really excited, it doesn’t even matter if the chair’s occupied. Not if the person inside is someone she trusts to catch her in time, so she can bounce once more.

“Careful!”

“Yeah!”

When she’s tired enough, the drop guides her to a safe landing and a bit of a rest. The moment was there. The movement was there. For now, that’s enough.

I think a lot of us could understand her just fine.

It’s easy to feel restricted in life. Maybe it’s through high demands at work, or family worries, or money pressures. Maybe all is outwardly fine, but you’re left wondering if you make any mark or leave any impression.

Those are the times we most need to let go into something that wakes us up again. Even if it’s a small thing. Because if it lets you rediscover the joy of the moment, it’s not that small.

A former pastor of mine, who now lives in Maine, once told me that the best advice he had ever gotten as a minister was to take up an activity that he could complete. When you’re in a job that never really ends, the mentor told him, “It’s good to be able to finish something.”

He took up carpentry. Not necessarily the greatest carpentry, he would laugh. But the quality didn’t matter. This was his motion, his letting go, his chance to connect again with the joy of creation.

Sometimes I wonder if something similar doesn’t infuse the various populist movements, for better or worse. At the federal level, we’ve often seen stubbornness that has fused into outright paralysis, where it doesn’t matter if you get anything done, so long as you can prevent the other guy from doing anything. It can be frustrating to watch, even maddening.

In a situation like that, is it any wonder that so many pursue candidates who promise forward motion, a change, a transformation? The call can draw people to the best or the worst, with no regard for the chances of victory – only the knowledge that they’re moving again, part of something bigger than themselves.

Obviously, as we’ve seen with some would-be leaders, that need can be misused. Someone who drops without watching what they’re dropping into might hit something unyielding … or fall to the floor … or smash through a sliding glass door. You have to keep your eyes open. The idea is to fall freely, not blindly.

But just because we can do it badly doesn’t mean the need isn’t there.

Let go. Aim well. Fall into something better and come back smiling.

I’ll be over here, keeping an eye on the armchair.

“Yeah!!!”

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The Power of “Yes”

Any time we grumble at gridlock, I can imagine the surprise of the Founding Fathers.

“A government that does nothing at all? Sounds like heaven, sir!”

OK, that might be a bit too strongly worded. After all, the Constitution was created because the old Articles of Confederation had proved impotent. Several founders (though by no means all) had realized the federal government needed more authority to act if the system was going to function at all.

Still, they were suspicious of a government that did too much. They could remember Townshend Acts, Tea Acts, and all the rest. So the Constitution was drawn with a bias toward inaction. A Congress that wanted to do something could be checked by the President and the courts. A Congress that wanted to do nothing… couldn’t really be forced to do otherwise.

Given that, I wonder what they would have made of the popularity of executive orders.

First, a little mythbusting. There’s nothing new or unconstitutional about executive orders themselves. The practice goes back to George Washington and began accelerating after the Civil War, reaching its peak in the first half of the 20th century. FDR was the most ardent practitioner (of course), but presidents Hoover, Taft, Truman, and Teddy Roosevelt were hardly shy of independent presidential action themselves. If anything, modern presidents are more restrained about using that power than those from Roosevelt to Roosevelt.

But it’s still an uncomfortable power to me.

In a government designed to default to “no,” this is the power of “yes.” In itself, that might not sound like a bad thing. We all know the image – and the reality – of a Congress locked in inertia, seemingly unable to agree on the time of day, much less anything of substance. So when a major debate goes nowhere, such as the debate on national gun control, it can be dangerously appealing to do an end run around the whole logjam.

The trouble is, the use of executive power rarely stops with the things you love.

Many people know that I’m a Tolkien fan. (I promise, this is relevant.) Between the novels and the recent immensely popular films, there are few people who aren’t familiar with the plot of “The Lord of the Rings” and its quest to destroy a magic ring to save the world.

What’s less familiar to the casual fan, though, is the nature of the Ring. It did more than just cause a wielder to turn invisible. In the hands of someone with enough power, it would grant a power of command – the ability to reorder the world exactly the way you wanted it, overriding the wills of others to do so.

That was the power that made the Ring so tempting, even to the righteous. Heroes fell, desiring it, even those wise enough to know better. The wisest – Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel – simply shunned it.

“With that power, I should have power too great and terrible,” the wizard Gandalf says. “And over me, the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly. … Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me!”

It’s true that executive orders can and have done good in the past. But they are not guaranteed to do good. What they are guaranteed is to do.

Independent executive action did indeed issue the Emancipation Proclamation. But it also issued the order creating internment camps for Japanese-Americans. Granting freedom, seizing freedom.

The strength and weakness of an executive order is that what one president can do, another can undo. But is that enough of a check? How much can be done in the meantime? How long might something sit before it is undone, by another president, or a dilatory Congress, or the courts?

Democratic friends: Is this a power you would want in the hands of Donald Trump?

Republican friends: Is this a power you would want in the hands of Hillary Clinton?

All friends: Is this a power you want in the hands of absolutely anybody at absolutely any time? Because right now, that’s how it’s potentially entrusted.

I’m not sure how we wind back the clock. I am sure we need to. However desirable the ends may be – and I’ve liked some of the ends a great deal – the means are far too dangerous. The boundaries are too fuzzy, the power too easy.

With this Ring, what have we wed ourselves to?

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Tightening at the Top

Times are tough even for yes-men.

The British news agency Reuters recently reported that austerity of a sort has even reached the Chinese parliament, a group that basically exists to gather once a year and kowtow to the Communist Party. This year, that party for the Party is required to be much simpler: no welcoming ceremonies for deputies at the train and railway stations, no flowers in the hotel rooms, no fancy galas or pricey meals.

Put it this way. When the state isn’t even sure it wants to shut down the road as you drive by, things are sensitive.

A little belt-tightening? Not exactly. According to Reuters, it’s more of a charm offensive.

“The party, which has shown no sign of giving up its tight grip on power, has struggled to contain public wrath at a seemingly endless stream of corruption scandals, particularly when officials are seen as abusing their posts to amass wealth,” the agency reports.

Hmm. A government afraid of the public? Needing to calm the waters, sharpen its image, make at least symbolic moves to straighten up?

How do we get a piece of that?

The cases, of course, aren’t perfectly analogous. The Chinese Parliament is a rubber-stamp body connected to a system that’s perceived to be increasingly out of touch with the people. The U.S. Congress is a brawling system that can’t often agree with itself, never mind anyone else – and is perceived to be increasingly out of touch with the people. When the IRS has a higher approval rating, there’s definitely room for improvement.

But where?

This should probably be a serious call for reform, I know. But with the Chinese example in front of me, my mind couldn’t help taking a few flights of fancy: “If I could set some new rules for Congress, what would I do?”

Tip the Waiter, Please: Let’s face it. As much as we’d like to get all the special-interest money out of Congress, it’s not likely to happen. We could put a delegation of angels in there and within six months, half of them would be getting campaign assistance from the National Halo Association (“A brighter tomorrow – today”).

So if we can’t stop it, can we at least benefit from it? Under the new Decrees, 15 percent of all special-interest money received by a congressman or senator would be set aside for the voters themselves, to be totaled and dispersed every Dec. 1. Call it a Christmas stimulus, if you will. (Oh, if you want to be boring, we can put that finders’ fee toward the debt instead. Meanies.)

Hit the Highway: It’s admirable that so many delegates want to travel home so frequently. But from now until your terms are up, planes are forbidden to you. (Sorry, Hawaiian and Alaskan congressmen, it’s for the greater good.) If you travel, it will be by bus, train, or personal vehicle – the perfect chance to get an up-close look at both the country and the state of its infrastructure. Highway bridges become a higher priority when you may be rolling over the next collapsing one yourself.

The Grand Tour: One big issue with today’s Congress is that many delegates – both Democrat and Republican – come out of “echo chamber” districts where they rarely hear opposing viewpoints until they get to the Capitol floor. So let’s bring in the scheduling geniuses from the National Football League and start planning some away games. At least half of the visits back home must be to districts in your state that had a majority for the other party, with a “Congress on the Corner”-style public meeting that lasts at least an hour.

And yes, Colorado Republicans, we can probably talk about scheduling a Denver visit on Bronco weekends. But no public meeting, no game. Capice?

I know. Idle fantasies. Waste of time, right?

I mean, next thing, I’ll be thinking these folk work for us. That they’re actually supposed to be accountable to us. That if we want something different than what we’ve got, we actually have the power to make it happen; that it’s our country, to be reshaped by us as we see fit.

Whoa. Better get down from those clouds. It’s getting me a little light-headed.

Maybe I should go get us a meal.

Chinese sound OK?

 

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And Off They Flu

In case you ever wanted to know, the words I Hate The Flu come up 16.4 million times on a Google search.

By now, Heather’s ready to add another 500,000 personally.

That’s right. My wife is down, despite hope and caution and a flu shot of her own. So is Missy, though our favorite developmentally disabled ward may have actually run head-first into a killer cold instead. But either way, it leaves me in the position of Jerry Lee Lewis, the “Last Man Standing.”

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!

It happened on a Wednesday, of course. Strange things often seem to in the Rochat household, be it back injuries or vomiting dogs. If Johnny Cash had lived here when he wrote “Stripes,” the song would have begun:
“On a Wednesday, I was arrested,
“On a Wednesday, they locked me in a cell …”

Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes, shifting from Carl Bernstein to Florence Nightingale.

From the outside, taking a day off work to care for a sick family might not sound too bad. No one likes having people under the weather, of course, but a change of routine is good, right? A little peace and quiet on “hump day” might be just the thing in a busy week, yes?

I agree. It sounds great.

It bears no resemblance to any kind of reality this week, but it sounds great.

As every parent of small children knows, this is the beginning of a domestic decathlon. Everything’s on you now, from brewing tea to canceling rides, from stories to toast to trips to the bathroom. An Olympic-level competitor in this event will climb and descend stairs like a fly trapped in an M.C. Escher painting, each time bringing up or carrying away something new.

By the time you’re done, the return to work is a well-earned vacation by comparison. But don’t tell my bosses I said that.

(What’s that? Oops. Well, maybe they’ll skip to the comics this week.)

Complain? Not a bit. This is what you do. If I learned nothing else from my own parents, it’s that the biggest part of being a spouse or a parent is being there, even when it’s difficult or inconvenient. No, especially then.

I’m not saying hover constantly. I think we’ve all had more than enough of “helicopter parenting,” even before the Cincinnati college student last December who got a restraining order against her folks. But when a crisis hits, you do the job you’re needed to do.

Pity Congress can’t seem to figure out the same thing, right?

Hmm. Maybe we can use this. This could be the next big march on Washington – a million parents, all with flu-stricken children, advancing on the Capitol. The battle cry would be terrifying in its simplicity: “You don’t mind keeping an eye on them while I run a quick errand, do you? Thanks!”

With the right coordination, we could bring gridlock to its knees. Or at least to its tissue boxes.

So what do you say? Families of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our mucus, and millions of Google hits to win!

I think Wednesday’s good for me.

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Looking Forward

I wish I could be more surprised about what happened to RG3.

If football news isn’t usually your thing, let me explain. RG3 is the headline writer’s favorite nickname for Robert Griffin III of the Washington Redskins.(We all love a cute abbreviation in this business, especially one that rhymes). Griffin’s been maybe the best rookie quarterback of the season, and a big reason why Washington made the NFL playoffs at all.

And now he’s broken. Maybe badly enough to miss next year entirely.

Why? Because he played hurt in the team’s only playoff game. And got hurt even worse.

There’s been a lot of recriminations by fans. Not aimed at Griffin himself, of course; he’s a young man with the judgment and inexperience of many young men, and given a chance to play, he’ll play. No, the growling’s been saved for the team’s coach, for its doctor, for anyone who actually let him. “Sacrifice your future for the chance to win one game? Sure!”

But again, why is anyone surprised?

If Washington, D.C. has shown a gift for anything, it’s burning long-term needs for short-term gain.

Too cynical? Consider this.

We just went through a stunningly negative election with enough bad feeling to go around. Why? Because it works. Never mind if it further deepens distrust of the nation’s leaders (in 2011, 89 percent of Americans said they didn’t trust government to do the right thing), so long as it gains your candidate or party an edge now. Right?

Heck, you don’t even have to wait for an election. Just watch the fiscal cliff debates. Or maybe the budget ceiling talks. Or any of the key long-term decisions that get turned into an excuse for political games of “chicken.” So long as you look good to the folks back home, a solution doesn’t matter much, right? Especially if, deep down, you don’t believe one is possible in the first place.

And that’s the saddest thing of all, whether you’re talking football or politics. At a base level, these are decisions of despair. In a real sense, it’s giving up on the future to say that tomorrow’s consequences don’t matter if you don’t win today.

No wonder zombie apocalypses and “The Hunger Games” are so popular now.

Now, I’m not arguing to obsessively worry about the future, either. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” the old verse goes; don’t worry too much about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own. I understand that. I even try to remember that.

But there’s a balance. If you’re smart, you don’t blow the kids’ college savings on a trip to Hawaii. You plan, to the limits of your resources and ability. You think about consequences because otherwise consequences think about you.

It’s something both coaches and congressmen would do well to remember.

The sad thing is, there’s an excellent example of how to do it right – and it’s also out of Washington. Last season, the Washington Nationals had a hot young pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, come back to them after surgery and a year of rehabilitation. When he came back in 2012, the team set an innings limit for Strasburg to protect his recovery. This far and no further.

It meant Strasburg sat down in September in the middle of a hot pennant race. It meant he couldn’t help his team in the playoffs.

But it also meant he may be around to help his team for a long time to come.

We could use some more of that thinking. Starting at ground level. If fans or voters want a longer view in the arenas they care about, there are ways to reflect that. Few enough votes, few enough ticket sales, can drive home the point that ignoring the future has consequences now.

And if we stick to our guns, the ones who think otherwise may not have much future at all.