Notes on January 6 and the relevant congressional hearings
‘Witch hunt!” “Show trial!” “Old news!” “Move on!” I heard those cries in the late 1990s. (Democrats even founded an organization: MoveOn.org.) We now hear those same cries, from the other direction.
I sometimes feel I’m trapped in a Groundhog Day. This weird political loop.
In March 2001, I wrote a piece about one of Bill Clinton’s last-minute actions as president. The subtitle of the piece: “Before we ‘move on.’”
• When you listen to the Jan. 6 hearings, you can see why Republicans, both in electoral politics and in the media, worked so very hard to keep them from ever coming about.
• Every member of the Jan. 6 committee would have preferred an independent commission — a commission modeled on the 9/11 commission. Each party would have picked five citizens to serve. Every member of the Jan. 6 committee voted for an independent commission. In the House, 35 Republicans voted for it, bucking their party leadership. In the Senate, however, Republicans managed to kill the commission. So . . .
• Accountability is very important. It’s unpleasant for those being held accountable, of course. But it’s very important nonetheless.
• Moving on is very important too. Without moving on, we are mired forever. There can be no progress. This is true in personal life, national life — life. But accountability should come first, I believe, and then a moving on.
• One thing about the hearings: The people who watch them, or read about them, probably don’t need to. They know the basics of Jan. 6 already. But how about the people who don’t know the basics? Who have been misled?
“You are what you eat,” goes an old saying. More and more, I see that you are the media you consume.
• Everyone is entrenched, I sense. No one is budgeable. If Donald Trump and his team swore affidavits that they tried to steal the election, ultimately through intimidation and violence, I doubt that one mind would change.
Am I cynical? Maybe more like realistic. As Bush 41 used to say, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.
• Naturally, Republicans are inflamed at the Democrats and at Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. But here’s the thing: What’s indicting Trump and his team — what’s damning them — is not the Democrats or Cheney and Kinzinger. It’s the testimony of Trump staffers and cabinet officials. Plus the video evidence.
• I can envision President Biden offering Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom — which would be very ticklish for Pence, in that he’s hoping for the 2024 nomination.
• A lot of us wanted Mike Luttig to be on the Supreme Court. We thought he was the very model of a “constitutional conservative.” I admired him not just politically, or judicially, but also personally. After the murder of his father, he was rock-like. Obviously, Mike Luttig has not changed over the years.
• In my observation, people favor the rule of law when it’s their enemies violating the law. People favor norms when their enemies are violating them. And so on and so forth. The truly liberal-democratic mind and spirit are rare. Tribalism is the rule.
Again, I did not just fall off the turnip truck.
• Marco Rubio tweeted, “If Congress was controlled by leaders who cared about the problems of real people any prime time hearing would have been about the highest inflation in 40 years.”
All of our lives, we have heard this: The existence of one problem means you can’t talk about another. I never believed it, even as a child. Yet the belief is pervasive, and politically expedient. Also: pathetic.
• Note that Rubio said “real people.” (When I was growing up, “real people” was usually said by the Left, who contended that Republicans were just a bunch of country-clubbers, who weren’t “real.” It was Bill Buckley, more than anyone, who talked me out of this idea of “real people,” and a “real America.” Everyone is real, and all of America is real, even the parts you don’t like.) Okay, here is another Republican member of Congress, Jim Jordan:
Real America doesn’t care about the January 6th Committee.
Gas is over $5 per gallon!
Set side “Real America.” In my experience, when people say, “No one cares,” they usually mean, “I don’t care, and neither do my closest friends, and neither should you.” Yet you are entitled to care about what you care about. You are entitled to regard as important what you regard as important.
Almost every week — every day! — I have occasion to quote a Lyle Lovett lyric: “It may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me.”
• Is the 2020 presidential election old news? You may have seen that the Texas GOP adopted a plank last week saying that Biden “was not legitimately elected.”
• MAGA is, among other things, very, very lucrative. Trump raises many millions for “election defense.” Steve Bannon raises many millions to “build the wall.” Yet the money goes to other purposes. If the marks don’t care — the donors don’t care — should the rest of us care? Probably. But it’s odd to care more than those who have been parted from their money.
• I found the testimony of a police officer, Caroline Edwards, particularly moving, and infuriating. On January 6, she blacked out and hit her head against concrete stairs. And when she regained consciousness?
“. . . what I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding, they were throwing up. I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood.”
“Back the Blue” and all that.
• Orwell famously noted that people were called “virulently anti-Communist,” regularly — but seldom, or never, “virulently anti-fascist.” I now see the phrase “virulently anti-Trump.” What is the correct degree of anti-Trumpism? (And what is the correct degree of anti-Communism? Is only a little tut-tutting allowed?) What is the correct degree of support for the constitutional order, including the peaceful transfer of power?
You know?
• About norms: It is normal for the losing candidate to concede on Election Night, or at least the next day. (True, there are special cases — as in 2000.) It is normal for the incumbent president to greet the president-elect in the Oval Office (a few days after the election). It is normal for the incumbent president to attend the inauguration of the new one.
None of those things happened in 2020 (and early ’21).
I must say, I appreciated Mike Pence’s presence on the platform on Inauguration Day. It said: “continuity”; “normality.”
It is a very low bar, to ask that the outgoing vice-president attend the inauguration. Nevertheless . . .
• The big question has never really changed, since 2015: Is Donald Trump fit to be president, in mind and character, or not? Tens of millions say yes; tens of millions say no. And here we are, still.
• A U.S. president inspired a mob to assault the U.S. Congress for the purpose of stopping a constitutional process (which they succeeded in doing, for hours). Every conservative, every American, every person ought to be revolted by that.
• Earlier this year, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said, “We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
Pretty straight.
• As I see it, what Republicans and Democrats need to agree on is the frame — the frame of our country: its system, its constitution. “A nation of laws, not men.” Once both sides rally ’round the frame, we can argue about everything else: our policy preferences. But without agreement on the frame, we are “screwed without a kiss,” as my father would say.
The older I get, the simpler I get (I hope not simplistic). I have very, very strong views, yes. I have spent a lifetime airing them (to the dismay of many). But probably none of my views is stronger than my desire to see the frame protected. To keep our whole project, our experiment, going. And there are people, coming from various directions, who would like to tear it down.
Lately, I have been saying, “I’m not so much red or blue as red, white, and blue.” This sounds like cheap Fourth of July rhetoric. But I mean it.
Speaking of rhetoric: Reagan often said, “Freedom is only a generation away from extinction.” To be perfectly honest, I used to roll my eyes a bit when he said this. It sounded overly — well, rhetorical. It sounded alarmist. It sounded glib. Weren’t we on kind of a constitutional auto-pilot? A republican cruise control? I’m not rolling my eyes anymore.
Let me close with our old friend Learned Hand: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”
Yikes. To be continued . . .