Dysfunction Junction
A master class in false equivalence
I didn’t intend to write anything tonight, but then I read something in the news that irked me so much that I’m sending out another post.
I’ll try to keep it brief.
What got me angry wasn’t even the news that was being reported. Instead, it was the way it was reported. More on that in a moment.
But first, let’s start with a quiz of sorts:
1. True or False: Is the U.S. Congress highly dysfunctional?
2. The reason for the dysfunction is:
a) Mostly because of Republicans
b) Mostly because of Democrats
c) Blame is equal.
There is pretty much bipartisan unanimity around #1. So, we’ll say the answer to this one is, “true.” Re #2, it would seem that the answer is a matter of perspective. Democrats likely blame Republicans and vice versa. And then there are the people who are so frustrated they blame everyone in Washington.
“A pox on both their houses” is a tidy story. But it’s B.S. And how do we know this? Because we actually have data. When the Republicans are in the majority, almost nothing gets done except performative peacocking. They can’t even keep a Speaker of the House.
When the Democrats have been in the majority recently, even by a razor-thin margin, all sorts of legislation gets passed.
Sure, there is grandstanding on the Democratic side. Some representatives and senators are corrupt or incompetent. Politics is made up of people, and there are always bad apples in the human bunch.
But the relative culpability of the two parties for the reckless dysfunction isn’t even close. Because this isn’t about individuals; it’s about movements. And the MAGA tsunami has swept over the GOP, bringing in agents of chaos who have about as much interest in passing a bill as a bull has in polishing china.
Which brings me to an article in The New York Times. The headline reads: Departing House Members Ask: ‘Why Am I Here?’ An interesting tact. I wondered what the take would be. When I saw the subtitle, I became worried: “A wave of retirees from both parties, including committee chairs and rising stars, say that serving in Congress is no longer worth the frustration.”
Many in the Washington press corps get downright giddy when they get to use the phrase “from both parties.” Sadly, all too often, it is a sign that we will have to wade through a thicket of false equivalence.
How bad would this example be? It was worse than I feared.
The veteran reporter Robert Draper began the article with a Democratic example:
At some point during a routine seven-hour trip from his Oregon district to Washington, Representative Earl Blumenauer, 75, a Democrat who has served in Congress for almost three decades, experienced a depressing epiphany.
“I distinctly recall crawling on yet another plane to come back for yet another vote that made absolutely no difference and was going absolutely nowhere,” he said in an interview. “And I had this singular experience of asking myself, ‘Why would you do this?’”
Since Draper was interviewing Blumenauer, perhaps he could have asked a follow-up question about why he thinks the House is so dysfunctional. In other interviews, the representative hasn’t been shy about decrying the chaos in the Republican caucus and the far-right agitators. But that would upset a (falsely) balanced narrative.
After the anecdote above, Draper lays out his thesis. It is factually accurate but also wildly misleading:
Mr. Blumenauer’s moment of truth was in fact far from singular. A total of 54 House members, or about one-eighth of the total body, will not be seeking another term this November.
As a matter of sheer numbers, the exodus is not history-making. What is striking are the names on the list. There are rising stars, seasoned legislators and committee chairs. But not a single bomb-thrower.
For three of the 54, the issue was forced: one by expulsion (George Santos, the Long Island Republican) and two by being gerrymandered out of winnable districts (Representatives Wiley Nickel and Kathy Manning, both North Carolina Democrats). Two others died (Donald M. Payne Jr., of New Jersey, and A. Donald McEachin of Virginia, both Democrats).
Another 18 members vacated their seats to seek a different elective office. That leaves 31 members — 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, 20 of whom were interviewed for this article — who have decided to leave the House of their own volition, with no electoral pressure to do so.
This paints a picture of two parties with serious people on both sides, equally justifiably frustrated by institutional dysfunction. It notes that “not a single bomb-thrower” is leaving. But, pray tell, do the bomb-throwers in the House have Ds next to their names, or Rs? Do they support Hakeem Jeffries, or Donald Trump?
This is journalistic malpractice. And it is a danger to the continuation of the republic. On one side, there are autocrats who cozy up to Russia, deny the results of a fair election, and destroy all the workings of the government to the point they would drive our economy over the cliff. And on the other side is a fractious and diverse caucus trying to govern. You can disagree with their policy positions and their priorities, but they are not trying to end American democracy.
As the article progresses, the subtext is clear to anyone who knows the history and current state of affairs, but Draper never makes it explicit.
He says the people he interviewed “depicted an institution now dominated by brawlers and attention-seekers, ‘like they’re all auditioning for a political reality show,’ said Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat who is retiring after 22 years.” Did Draper ask whom Ruppersberger had in mind and which party they were from? If he did, he didn’t include it.
Draper then quotes another Democrat leaving, Brian Higgins:
Mr. Higgins of New York recalled that a formative moment occurred on the House floor in 2009, when a little-known Republican, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech about health care to a joint session of Congress by yelling, “You lie!”
“Joe’s not a bad guy by any means,” Mr. Higgins said. “But he’ll tell you his fund-raising went through the roof right after that.”
Do you think, if Draper had inquired, Higgins might have drawn a direct line from Joe Wilson to today and what kind of people dominate the Republican Party and what kind of antics lead to floods of donations from the party faithful?
As the article goes on with a look back to the dysfunction under Speaker Boehner and how it has escalated more recently, again, the subtext is clear to anyone who has been paying attention. The Republican Party has been on an express train to Nutsville, and they’re taking Congress and the rest of the country hostage on their joyride to the MAGA motherland.
As the undercurrents and unspoken truths around the article continue to build, Draper addresses it in a roundabout way. And it took until the 28th paragraph (I counted):
Mr. Buck, Mr. Duncan and Mr. Wenstrup (Republicans who are retiring) each insisted that the Democrats had their share of extremist show ponies as well. In reply, several Democrats maintained that even if this were so, their leftist colleagues were not hellbent on chaos like their far-right counterparts.
This is the ultimate in bothsidesism. A bad faith amorphous charge leveled by Republicans and a generic paraphrase of “several Democrats” in response. Do you think if the Democrats were in the majority, they would have dithered with aid to Ukraine and not done anything about the climate crisis? Threatened to default on the debt? Pursued ridiculous impeachment hearings based on conspiracy theories? There is NO COMPARISON.
Draper should know better—and he does. So why can’t he report the truth? These kinds of distortions do a grave disservice to readers, and voters. The facts may be correct, but the context, and reasoning, are false. It is more than disgraceful—it is dangerous.
Do you know whose name doesn’t appear once in the article? Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, her tenure as Speaker and all that she accomplished didn’t fit Draper’s narrative.
What a shame.
There are members of the coup who still haven't come out of the closet in every facet of society now. That a few are hiding in the major media outlets is not surprising. What is surprising is the NYT does not have editorial control over what makes it into print. Or, there are coupers on the editorial board?
Well said Eliot. I was trained in old school newspaper journalism and, although we were taught to be open minded and inclusive, our main mission was to farrow out the “truth” beneath the fog and to safeguard the basic mechanisms of democracy.
Your (and my) anger seems to be connected to this neutered corporate “bothsideism” which has no depth or conviction. We are trapped in a maze of propaganda without editing toward the direction of democratic purpose and there is little wonder why frustration and despair are the result. The media needs to reclaim its mandate as the “Forth Estate” of democracy and help us all find direction and purpose for our nation again. We did it once ousting Sen. Joe McCarthy and his thugs and we can do it again when we collectively decide “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it any more.”