Tag Archives: House of Representatives

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When We Are the Problem

The old adage that ‘we get the politicians that we deserve’ may be more accurate than we think.

The final chapter of his political career is now being written for former New York Representative George Santos, who has pleaded guilty to a host of financial and legal infractions, and for deceiving constituents and election officials in New York’s Third Congressional District. Last May a U.S. District Court indicted Santos for money laundering and wire fraud, soon adding 23 counts, including charging $44,000 on credit cards funded by campaign contributors. His guilty plea will require financial restitution involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he could spend up to eight years in prison.

As is now well known, Santos fabricated most of his biography while courting friends within the Republican Party on Long Island, winning their endorsement and defeating Representative Rob Zimmerman in November of 2022. He won that election in a virtual news blackout that kept his checkered past away from the public: this, in the media capital of the nation with multiple newspapers. Only after his malfeasance became known was he expelled from the House in December of 2023.

My interest here is less about Santos and more about the troubling fact that the 4th wealthiest congressional district in the United States could elect a bad imitation of Zelig as their representative. Where was the due diligence of journalists, party leaders and the public who should have quickly flagged Santos as a not-very-sophisticated phony? The New York Times began to examine the false claims of wealth and a suspicious resume in December, after he was elected. They were well behind the tiny North Shore Leader in the district that correctly reported before the election that Santos “boasts like an insecure child, but he’s most likely just a fabulist, a fake.”

The paper usually endorsed Republicans, but opted for Zimmerman that year. Why had the media center of the nation with many news outlets not bothered to examine the fraudulent Trump acolyte right under their noses? It was not because he was engaged in a sophisticated ruse. Among many other lies, Santos claimed that he was a summa cum laude graduate of Baruch College, received an MBA from New York University, and worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs: all not true and easily checked. Santos’ hostility to LGBQ rights also rang false when someone discovered that he once performed in Brazilian drag performances: not itself disqualifying, but out-of-sync with the image he projected to voters. A district with an average household income in six digits surely had the resources to raise questions about his credibility. Upper crust heirs of the Van Cortlands, Roosevelts, and Clintons were complicit.

It would be foolish to assume that Santos was the rare solitary candidate to have skated on the thin ice of lies and deceptions. His case is just one of many “Strange but True” stories about American politicians that keep much of the rest of the world alternately entertained and alarmed. Even while there have been wonderful members in both bodies of the Congress, the case is a reminder that Americans with all the advantages of life may still be too bored or distracted to apply even elemental standards of character to determine a candidate’s veracity. If most of the folks in the 3rd District of New York were blind to who their representatives are, what hope is there for smaller districts with practically no news-gathering resources? For that matter, should we worry about whether enough Americans are discerning enough to see red flags in a current crop of presidential candidates, including one who inexplicably left the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park, and another who is facing jail time for a number of felonies?

 

 

 

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Clueless at Governing

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No nation looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus.

Congress is the best example of the price we can pay when the rewards of public performance are greater than those of private negotiation. Donald Trump and the so-called “Freedom Caucus” have tried out rhetorical in-your-face antics reminiscent of some of our darkest comics, but without the fun or wit.

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No one looking for a model of governmental efficiency would take any comfort from a good look at the current House leadership debacle. Its twin failures to produce effective public policy and work with the President offer cautionary truths about how to fail to produce effective action. The House of Representatives is a broken institution with public approval ratings to match. No country looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus. Bipartisanship occasionally breaks out and offers momentary hope. But it has become a major achievement to keep the government funded for a whole month. In the process, the Speaker of the House who finally negotiated a compromise promptly lost his job. In this body, the few conciliators in the governing party that remain seem mute and mostly ineffective.  For their part, Democrats appear to be willing to let the chaos continue, hoping it will convert into electoral gains.  As an idea, E pluribus unum no longer has much appeal.

While this branch of the of government was not designed to work with the efficiency of a parliament, congressional dysfunction now leaves so much on the table that leaves Americans less well-off and secure: everything from immigration reform to timely allocations of funds for infrastructure improvements. We know this institution is in deep trouble when many of its members are now willing to risk triggering a government default and imperiling the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency: usually for no more than pressing some dubious ideological point.

What is wrong? What best practices for communicating in organizations are routinely ignored? Briefly, some of the overwhelming problems on Capitol Hill have their origins in two ineffective communication patterns.

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The first is that the body is obviously and hopelessly organized into factions—notably parties, special interest caucuses, and their media—making it likely that members will only work to defend their kind rather than the whole. Since most of the process of legislating is done away from the floors of the House and Senate, it falls to party leaders, whips, and members to work out in private and with their own caucuses what they will accept by way of a legislative agenda. Differences of opinion have fewer chances to be moderated in environments that would encourage conciliation. The founders feared this hyper partisanship for good reason. Indeed, Senate and House Leaders now move so cautiously in their narrow partisan lanes that it can be hard to tell if their images on a screen are stills photos or videos.

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This problem is compounded by a tradition of individual offices set up as separate fiefdoms spread over four buildings on the east side of the Capitol. One wonders how different legislative life would be if the 435 voting members of the House worked in the conditions known to most of white-collar America: in the same ‘cubicle farm’ spread over one or two floors. As it is, support staffs and dispersed offices enable the kind of isolation of members that discourages more discussion across party lines. Revealingly, members note that most no longer share a meal in the U.S. Capitol’s various dining rooms: a small but revealing change from the past.

A second problem is the changing character of those seeking high public office. In the age of social media and 24-hour news there seems to be more interest in the expressive possibilities of serving in public office than doing the work of governing.  The temptation to continually raise campaign funds can easily become all-consuming.

In the lore of Congress there has always been an expectation that the “show horses” would sometimes win out over the “work horses.”  A retired Lyndon Johnson once complained to a CBS producer about the “pretty boys” created by the growth of television. The former Senate Majority leader’s point was that visual media gave rise to a new breed of members more interested in the theater of politics than finding ways to bridge differences.  We are electing figures who have very little interest or skill in active deliberation.

Since it is a solid axiom that we more easily find comity in small groups, trying to forge leadership within large bodies like the 535 member Congress needs to be seen for the problem it frequently is: the organizational equivalent of trying to get even a few dozen college professors to form a single straight line.  We seem to no longer find much joy in political unity.

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