Brace for impact
After listening to some of the Sunday news talk shows and a few clips from others, it seems abundantly clear that after the big bash last week with the Democratic leadership celebrating its control over the 110th Congress, the party’s over.
In this new era of divided government, the congressional hearing room is where the executive and legislative branches will clash.
Over the next few weeks, Senate Democrats plan to hold at least 11 hearings just on Iraq. In the House, one of the Democrats’ most dogged investigators is waiting to spring his committee on a different mission – suspected government fraud.
From the war to environmental policy and secret surveillance, the Democrats who now control both the House and Senate are armed with subpoena power and ready to summon panels of witnesses.
These newly empowered Democrats plan to put the Bush administration under scrutiny like never before.
Though it’s in the walls of Congress, it’s a very public scrutiny.
The congressional hearing room is a Washington set piece: A lonely witness at a table covered in red velvet, klieg lights glaring, a determined inquisitor across the floor. Congressional power in its rawest form.
Raw power seems to be the theme these days, from the rhetoric to the threats. How it’s used says a lot about those who have it. After all the eulogies for President Ford commending him for healing the nation during a painfully divisive time, who was listening? Who was sincere in praising a benevolent leader who chose to spare the nation from hostility within, especially with the constant threat of hostility from outside our borders?
We seem to be heading for a new rupture. Nancy Pelosi, “the most powerful woman in America,” used the first line of her address as Speaker of the House to say this: “I accept this gavel in the spirit of partnership, not partisanship…”
Let’s see which spirit prevails in the first hours of business in “the people’s house.”