Air mattresses in the mercenary Congress

Echoing my recent post on the current obsession among congressmen over avoiding all appearances of attachment to DC, the Washington Post today published an article about members of Congress sleeping on the floors of their offices.    Many of these are Tea Partiers who apparently have not realized that using their office as a home involves freeloading on the federal government for plumbing and electricity, possibly in violation of the tax code.  I don't care about this, but I would like my representatives to act like professionals with responsibilities of national importance. 

I agree with the Wayne Gilchrest quote:  "It's lonely. You're isolated. And it's in some ways, it's sort of pathetic." 

Congress is not summer camp.

Chris Lee in the mercenary Congress

As some of my research in the past has dealt with voter reaction to scandal accusations against members of Congress, I found the rapid resignation Congressman Chris Lee (R-NY) intriguing.  The story got a lot a fast headlines yesterday, but really very little in-depth or editorial coverage from what I can tell.   It is likely that Rep. Lee’s immediate and conclusive response saved him from the scrutiny that was applied to Senators John Ensign and David Vitter, who have (thus far successfully) endured in the face of what must be described as more serious scandals, albeit at the cost of his political career.

Conceivably, Lee believed the scandal would play as particularly tawdry with older voters because it involved anonymous communication over the internet.   But the basic gist of the story is really nothing more than “Lee intended to cheat on his wife, and was mildly dishonest in the way he went about it.”  This obviously reflects a serious personal moral failing, but it is nothing particularly unusual or surprising, nor does it call into question Lee’s ability to do his job.  It is pretty clear that Bill Clinton was guilty of much worse. 

Nevertheless, the main purpose of this post is not to posit an opinion on whether Lee should resign over these particular actions.  Rather, I want to argue that recent trends in how the role of members of Congress as leaders and politicians is viewed, and how members see their own roles, have made an increase in this sort of activity inevitable.  In particular, congressmen no longer “live” in Washington.  The see themselves as mercenaries for their district or their cause, marching to war during the week, leaving their families in their home districts, to hopefully reunite with on weekends amid a heavy schedule of constituent service and fundraisers.

This recent article by Lisa Miller in Newsweek shows how starkly things have changed from the recent past, where it was routine for congressional families to socialize with each other regardless of party lines. Miller notes that among 46 freshman members of Congress interviewed, “only one said he or she was planning to move to Washington with spouse and children in tow”.    Perhaps most tellingly, “Chris Gibson” (like Lee, from upstate New York) “plans to sleep on a blow-up mattress in his Washington office—and then hightail it back on weekends to Kinderhook, New York, where his young family resides.” 

Miller regrets that the lack of Congressional spouses in Washington has reduced bipartisan collegiality in the body.  But how can it also not increase the sense of loneliness that members feel on the job?  Moreover, the simple fact that many members have only temporary housing in Washington must encourage the sense that they are always on the road, always in campaign mode, always needing to be ready to change their lives, their routines, and perhaps their political actions, at slightest sign of crisis or controversy.  Can we really expect our elected officials to view themselves as serious thinkers and statesmen when they are essentially living the home lives of college frat boys?  These are the leaders who are tasked to determine the direction that our national policies will take us, and voters seems to begrudge them the basic wish to live normal family lives in the city where they work.

Perhaps if Lee has moved his family to DC with him, he would have never experienced whatever sense of loneliness or descent into immaturity that drove him to solicit anonymous sex over the internet.  And even if still committed these actions, morally repugnant but professionally inconsequential, maybe he would have has the stability and resolve to tough out the scandal if he and his family ever really saw Washington as their home.  In the recent political climate, no legislator wants to be tagged as a “career politician” or “Washington insider”.  But I believe the constant pressure to style oneself an “outsider” within Congress has had severe costs on both the professional and personal lives of members.

Tucson and Gun Rights

As I am sure any reader can tell from the infrequent rate of my postings so far, I do not intend for this blog to consist of my personal reactions to current political events.  For the most part, I don’t think they would be that interesting.  But the tragic incident in Tucson this past weekend is difficult to leave without comment.  Rather than spout platitudes about the state of American political discourse that so many others have, instead I will leverage this opportunity to state my general position on the issue of gun violence.  It is of course possible that Jared Loughner was in some way inspired to commit these acts by some of the hateful rhetoric that has been thrown out there, but it is completely obvious to me that he was enabled by the laws permitted him to wield a weapon that no private individual (regardless of mental instability) should be able to own.

Simply put, I think private handgun ownership should be illegal (I don’t really care one way or the other about rifles and such.)  I believe this position is clearly at odds with the 2^nd amendment, and I would like to see the 2^nd amendment repealed.  It is infuriating to me that we constantly infringe on freedoms in countless ways to fight a terrorist “threat" that has killed over the course of my lifetime barely more Americans than gun violence kills every month.   On this issue, I would actually be in favor of the most strict construction of the 2^nd amendment: that it bars all attempts by the government to impose restrictions on weapons ownership.  I think under this interpretation, the amendment would certainly be quickly repealed, or at least modified to allow much wider regulation than is allowed under current jurisprudence.

It seems like the supporters of gun rights advance two general classes of utilitarian arguments: first, than gun ownership directly prevents more crimes than it causes (e.g. if guns were illegal, only criminals would have guns); and second, that private gun ownership is a shield against government tyranny at some point in the future.  

I think the first class of arguments are laughable and rather short-sighted.  It may be true that a lot of criminals would still be able to obtain guns in the short term, but at least these would eventually be taken off the street, even if it takes fifty years.  After all, how many crimes are committed with a fifty-year old weapon?  (Well, obviously more would be if no more recent weapons were available, but still…) Moreover, the fact that only people with criminal intent would have guns may allow us to thwart more crimes before they happen merely by discovering the weapon that the criminal intended to use.  I’m not really going to address these arguments in any detail, because they are completely silly to me. 

As for the second class, it doesn’t seem to me that gun advocates are looking at what the likely forms of tyranny would actually look like.   Once this is considered, private handgun ownership almost certainly exacerbates rather than alleviates the threat of such tyranny.  First, I should note that the tyranny feared would likely involve the suspension of many facets of the constitution; I doubt the second amendment would be much of a shield under this scenario.  But most importantly, the sort of “tyranny” we tend to see in nations that are ostensible democracies usually results in the subjugation of minorities that are disliked by the majority, not subjugation of majority populations by powerful minorities.    Violence tends to favor those with numerical strength, while politics at least gives equal weight to discrete discourses at a certain point in the process.  That is, while minorities may be voted down by majorities, they still have a chance to make their case.  And in many instances, this principled case is victorious over the course of time.  But if the game is just “our guns” versus “your guns”, the more morally powerful case really has no chance.   Just look at the Jim Crow South: an armed majority did nothing to resist that tyranny; rather it actively aided in its persistence.  And the civil rights movement was ultimately won not by exercise of the 2^nd amendment, but exercise of the 1^st.

In the case of creeping tyranny in the US, the tyrant will come to power with the support of the majority.    The more that majority is armed, the less the principled case for a return to democracy and a restoration of civil and human rights will be heard.

Honestly, I can’t think of a single reform that would be of more immediately benefit to our country than repeal of the 2^nd amendments.

I know a lot of gun rights advocates claim that gun owners simply don’t “like” guns (i.e. they don’t understand the enjoyment that people get out of them).  At least for me, this is true…I have no desire to ever shoot a gun, and I don’t really like violent movies or TV shows (or at least, those that I like I like despite their violence, or because of the way they handle the consequences of violence).  But I will say this: I love poker, and it plays a large role in my life, and I understand that many people also believe poker is a considerable social ill.  If there was a referendum that simultaneously outlawed both gun ownership and poker, I would vote for it in a heartbeat.