No, neither Congress nor national politics ever has been normal

Plus the little known but very important legislative branch support agencies get some deserved love

Source: YouTube.

If you are reading this Substack then you no doubt saw the “bleach blond, bad built, butch body” incident. I’ll admit I laughed at Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)’s alliterative takedown of Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).

A lot of people laughed, but many others also bemoaned the incident as just one more sign that Congress has gone berserk. Indeed, the conventional wisdom these days is that America’s politics are broken and some smart observers even go so far as to warn that the country is heading towards a civil war.

For sure, politics is intense right now, and various factors are at play, including:

1. intense political competition between the two major political parties;

2. politicians styling themselves as conflict entrepreneurs who aim to start fights rather than solve problems;

3. social anxieties flowing from globalization, the 2008 financial meltdown, COVID and the governmental response thereto;

4. the George Floyd protests and riots and the various elite policy responses thereto;

5. and various other things.

That said, I think that a lot of the takes on the state of Congress and American politics suffer from presentism. For example, a smart guy who is expert on energy policy declared to his 208,500 thousand followers:

“The most difficult thing to convey to young people who have come to political maturity in the last decade is that US politics used to be *normal*. People didn't have brain worms. They didn't shoot puppies. They didn't wave fascist conspiracy flags. Basic propriety was the norm.”

Give me a break.

Neither Congress nor politics ever has been a staid interaction of upright adults, as Gabe Fleisher notes.

A long-shot presidential candidate with brain worms? How about a president who was incapacitated by a stroke for months, allowing his wife to effectively govern the country in secret?

A governor shooting a puppy? Well, two sitting vice presidents have shot people.

A Supreme Court justice waving a politically charged flag? Actually, the norm that Supreme Court justices remain apolitical is fairly new. Many previous justices openly advised political figures while sitting on the court, from Justice John Catron (who balanced his judicial duties with serving as an unofficial campaign manager for James Polk in the 1844 election) to Justice Abe Fortas (who attended White House staff meetings during the LBJ administration and briefed the president on court deliberations).

Bad craziness and toxic politicking have always been a staple of Congress and politics.

The Founders were polarized around a range of issues and hotly disagreed over what the new nation should be: an industrial republic or an agrarian slaveocracy. President George Washington’s cabinet had members funding partisan newspapers trashing one another and Washington’s actions. The first Congress was highly productive, but even it had ugly clashes and deep divisions and some shady motives at play.

Rabid partisanship was firmly established in national politics by 1830, and in the run-up to the Civil War there were dozens of violent incidents between legislators that make last February’s confrontation of Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) look like a nothingburger.

Even the North’s crushing defeat of the South in the Civil War did not establish a period of normalcy in politics. In fact, the four ensuing decades featured really extreme politics and unbelievable legislative politics. Jon Grinspan’s The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) details the madness that went on for four decades: three presidents assassinated, elections stolen, legislators clobbering each other, torch-toting partisans brawling in the streets, and biased, corrupt media pouring kerosene on the populist rage.

Extreme politicking and congressional turmoil were not limited to the 19th century, of course. Who could forget the late 1960s, when a president and two major political leaders were assassinated, a presidential candidate stumped for segregation and got shot, legislators drank on the job, sexually harassed and assaulted women, and openly took bribes, and radicals tried to blow up the Pentagon, and many cities were trashed and burned?

The 1980s also were fun, what with the Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) sexual molestation scandal, which was one amongst many. There also was the ABSCAM bribery cases that netted legislators and the millions of Americans who took to the streets because they thought President Ronald Reagan was power mad and leading the country and world to a nuclear holocaust.

For sure, crazies and cranks have been with us always, and they inevitably draw media and public attention. Consider James Traficant (D-OH), who served in the House from 1985 to 2002, that time when supposedly normal people governed. He sported a bad toupee, regularly took to the floor to give wacky speeches heaping scorn on targets left and right. He got booted from the Congress for bribery, racketeering, filing false tax returns, and making his personal staff to work on his farm and houseboat.

I could go on, but you get my point. Yes, it is o.k. to be concerned with the state of our Congress and national politics. But please do not measure the state of today’s affairs against and imaginary, halcyon era of feel-good politics conducted by upright, serious elected officials. I’ll conclude by suggesting that we might also take some comfort that despite the cranks and extremists, the Republic has endured.

ICMYI

Santi Ruiz of the Statecraft Substack has published a four-part series on the legislative branch support agencies (LSA’s). These corps of civil servants are sources of expertise, analysis, and advice for Congress. Each of these interviews is a long read, but do make time for them. And consider subscribing to Statecraft!

• How to Forecast the American Budget: Q&A with former Congressional Budget Office Head Douglas Holtz-Eakin

• How to Teach Congress to Do Its Job: Q&A with Kevin Kosar on the Congressional Research Service

• How to Investigate the Federal Government: Q&A with Orice Williams Brown, Managing Director of GAO’s Office of Congressional Relations

• How to Assess the Future's Technologies: Q&A with Peter Douglas Blair, former Assistant Director of the [defunct] Office of Technology Assessment

If you want to learn more about the LSA’s please consider reading my chapter on them in Congress Overwhelmed: Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform (University of Chicago, 2020).

Thanks for reading!