The Mouth of the South (Part II)

Does Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson  lie awake at night thinking of ways to make himself look foolish?

An earlier commentary noted how the controversial Congressman has parlayed his new-found notoriety into campaign cash through the creation of a fund-raising website named CongressmanWithGuts.com.  A Florida Republican, Angie Langley, subsequently created a parody website - MyCongressmanIsNuts.com - to raise money to defeat Grayson.  Its success has been underwhelming; a paltry $10,000 in contributions to date, compared to the $546,000 Grayson claims to be collected.  Grayson should have brushed it off - his frequent media appearances give him ample opportunity to take on his critics.  But the thin-skinned Congressman, who can dish out abuse but apparently can't take it, was so incensed by MyCongressmanIsNuts.com that he penned a rambling four page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that the site and its creator by criminally prosecuted for election fraud.  His main complaint is that Ms Langley does not actually live in his electoral district and therefore the website name, MyCongressmanIsNuts.com is "fundamentally fraudulent and deceptive".  In addition, he huffs, the name of the website is "utterly tasteless and juvenile".  Ms Langley, he demands, should be "imprisoned for five years".

It should be apparent even to Congressman Grayson that this latest round of publicity will only help the Republicans.  It shows he has scant regard for this First Amendment, and given his own propensity for crude ad hominem attacks on political opponents, his complaint that the website is "utterly tasteless and juvenile" cries hypocrisy even in Washington, D.C., where hypocrisy is the order of the day.  

With all of the pressing issues on the Congressional agenda, the fact that Alan Grayson thinks this frivolous complaint was the best use of however much of his time it took to write, tells you all you really need to know about him.  If he can't stand the heat of criticism he should stay out of the political kitchen and seek alternative employment  in 2012.

The Mouth of the South

When will the Democratic leadership do us all a favor and rein in Alan Grayson, the uncouth Florida Congressman whose crude outbursts are an ever-increasing source of embarrassment to the Democratic Party?

The self-promoting windbag from Orlando famously rose from political obscurity with a speech (before an empty House chamber) in which he characterized the Republican plan for health care reform as "Die Quickly". The predictable Republican outcry was a monumental exercise in hypocrisy given the Right's own fear-mongering about "death panels", but the argument over Grayson's overblown rhetoric overshadowed the more substantive point in his speech, namely that 44,000 people die annually because they lack adequate health insurance. As a result,  Grayson's speech did nothing to advance the interests of health care reform.

But it did much to advance the interests of Grayson himself. The hitherto unknown first-term Congressman quickly established himself as a fixture on the liberal talk show circuit and moved adroitly to cash in on his new found fame. He created a narcissistically titled fund-raising website, "CongressmanWithGuts.com", and watched as the dollars began rolling in. But he wasn't one to rest on his "Die Quickly" laurels.  More inflammatory comments soon followed. He offended House Repubicans en masse by calling them "knuckle dragging neanderthals". He offended women (and most men) by referring to Linda Robertson, a senior adviser to Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernancke and former lobbyist, as a "K Street whore".  Next in his sights was former Vice President Dick Cheney.  Grayson called him a "blood sucking vampire" and, this past week, asked on MSNBC's Hardball program how he would respond to Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama Administration's foreign policy, he referred to a popular texting acronym - "STFU" - helpfully adding (for the benefit of those not accustomed to communicating in such manner) that the "S" stood for "shut".  Once again, the Republican response was immediate and predictable. An official statement noted that his constituents wanted "jobs, not nut-jobs".  Personally, I couldn't agree more.

People like Grayson bring nothing of value to the table.  His comments, and the Democratic Party's failure to distance itself from them, drag Democrats down to the same debased moral level that had (at least in the context of the health care debate) formerly been the exclusive preserve of Congressional Republicans and their industry paymasters.  The way to counter  a bad argument is not by childish name-calling, abuse or profanity, but simply by making a better argument.  And in this case, that shouldn't be hard to do.  But people like Grayson lack either the self-discipline, integrity, or maybe simply the intellectual capacity, to do that.  Sadly, so do many in the liberal media, who not only give this man the air-time he craves but continue to stroke his immense ego by using terms like "plain speaking", "no-nonsense", "gutsy" or - worst of all - "refreshing" and "honest" to describe his crude, calculating and abrasive persona.

And don't think for a moment, as he might like to have us believe, that his outrageous outbursts reveal a man who believes so passionately in his cause du jour that his emotions sometimes get the better of him. Far from it. He comes to his media interviews with his offensive one-liners ready prepared; if they don't work for one audience he recylces them for the next.  He has learned not only that publicity translates into Dollars, but also that attack politics generates bigger headlines than thoughtful policy proposals, especially on our lowest-common-denominator cable news networks.  It is a sad reflection on what we value in politicians that - according to his website - Grayson has already raked in over $500,000 in cold campaign cash since his "Die Quickly" speech. Talk about cash for trash.

I am absolutely confident that Grayson's carefully scripted diatribes haven't won even a single convert to the cause of health care reform or swayed a single wavering vote in the Congress.  I am equally confident that they have turned many away from the cause, and from the Democratic party as a whole.  So why have the so-called liberal media, and apparently numerous contributors, embraced him?  I think the answer is twofold.

First, there is a symbiotic relationship between people like Grayson and the cable news networks, which increasingly are the outlets people turn to for political news and analysis.  For the media, Grayson is good value for money because he can usually be counted on to say something outrageous (or "refreshingly honest" depending on your point of view), providing fodder for the analysts and pundits to pontificate about for days or even weeks afterwards.  All of which creates more publicity (and hence more campaign cash) for Grayson than would a thoughtful interview about substantive policy issues.  Unfortunately, the losers in this cynical exercise are the viewers.

But (and I return here to a depressingly familiar theme) Grayson's popularity also reflects a lack of  genuine leadership within the Democratic party, particularly on the issue of health care reform.  Progressive Democrats - who were key to  Obama's election victory and who bought into all of that talk about "change we can believe in" - are disillusioned with the President.  Disillusioned that he didn't roll up his sleeves and get to work on writing a health care bill on Day One but instead passed the buck to a dysfunctional Congress while he continued to jet around the country with his White House entourage making what were essentially meaningless campaign speeches; disillusioned that he appeared to buy into the naive notion that bipartisan legislation was possible, even though Republicans were manifestly opposed to any form of health care reform;  disillusioned that he allowed Republicans to set the tone of the debate with a campaign of lies and fear-mongering about "death panels" and "pulling the plug on Grandma";  disillusioned that he took off on a summer vacation while corporate interests and wealthy extremists on the Right bankrolled and organized the disruption of town hall meetings held by Democratic congressmen;  disillusioned that that he preferred to cut back-room deals with Big Pharma and pander to the likes of Joe Lieberman rather than "bang heads" with reluctant Democrats to ensure passage of the reform legislation he had promised and that Americans desperately need.  Given this abject display of political pusillanimity from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, it perhaps isn't hard to understand why some people were happy to see Grayson publicly lowering himself to the Republican level and turning their own tactics of smear and abuse against them.

But that is not the answer.  At the end of the day, vulgarians like Grayson don't help the Democratic Party or the causes it purports to espouse.  Nancy Pelosi and other members of the House leadership needs to take Grayson to the woodshed and let him no in no uncertain terms that further outbursts won't be tolerated - regardless how much they benefit his campaign coffers.

Plus ça Change We Can Believe In

The soap opera involving the pair of social climbing publicity seekers who gate-crashed a recent White House state dinner in honor of the Indian President just doesn’t go away. In the latest installment, the aspiring TV reality show performers, who refused an invitation to testify before a House oversight committee, have now indicated they will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights if the committee issues subpoenas.

The gatecrasher episode story comes hard on the heels of the “balloon boy” farce, in which another pair of irresponsible reality show would-be’s led law-enforcement officers on a wild goose chase after falsely claiming that their young son was on board a home-made balloon that “escaped” from their yard. In fact they had hidden him in an attic. The lie became apparent only when they shamelessly paraded the unfortunate child before the TV cameras and he blurted out the truth.

At a superficial level, these stories are a depressing reflection of the popular obsession with the TV reality show, a mindless phenomenon in which ostensibly “normal” people are willing to stoop to almost any level to gain their 15 minutes of fame - and millions of others take pleasure in watching them do it. This form of programming appeals to the TV companies. It is significantly cheaper to produce than conventional drama or comedy, and there is a seemingly endless supply of willing participants. Most of these shows do not, of course, reflect “reality” – but the engineered emotions and contrived outcomes don’t seem to deter those who tune in each week.

On a more serious level, the gate-crasher couple’s ability to gain unauthorized access to what is supposedly the most secure facility in the United States, and get (literally) within touching distance of the President, Vice President and other senior political figures, raises troubling questions about the quality of protection the President receives. As the Secret Service were quick to point out, the interlopers had to pass through a magnetometer in order to get into the function. Big deal. Once inside, they had access to plenty of potential deadly weapons. Unlike airline meals, White House fare comes with real knives. This couple should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law – they deserve to spend some time in jail, not on a TV screen.

More interesting to me, though, was the White House response to all of this. It has emerged that the blame for this egregious breach of security may lie in part at the door of the White House Social Secretary and Obama confidante Desiree Rogers. Ms. Rogers reportedly failed to arrange for Social Office staffers to be on duty at the door to help the Secret Service vet arriving guests. Ms Rogers herself apparently was not at her post on the night of the state dinner (it is customary for the Social Secretary to greet guests as they arrive) – because she was preening in front of the cameras in a designer gown, hob-nobbing with the dignitaries and generally playing the role of invited guest.

The Congressional Homeland Security Committee, which is investigating the breach of security, has a legitimate interest in questioning Ms. Rogers about what went wrong and what steps she is taking to ensure there are no repetitions. It should be simple enough. But astonishingly, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs rushed to announce that Ms. Rogers would not testify before Congress. "I think you know", Mr. Gibbs told a bemused press corps, "that, based on separation of powers, staff here don't go to testify in front of Congress."

What Mr. Gibbs appeared to be doing, without actually using the words, was invoking the doctrine of executive privilege. This is a absurd assertion in the circumstances, but one that has enormous potential political and constitutional implications for the future. As Mr. Gibbs ought to know, the doctrine of the separation of powers does not establish a broad or unqualified protection for members of the executive branch who would prefer not to have to testify before Congress – such testimony happens all the time. In a series of cases arising out of the Watergate break-in, the Supreme Court made clear that executive privilege is a narrow and qualified privilege that may be asserted only as to communications the President receives in discharging the responsibilities of his office and that bear upon policy or decision making. In such cases, moreover, the interests of the President in maintaining the confidentiality of the advice he receives must be balanced against other legitimate public interests. Whatever testimony Ms. Rogers could have given to the Homeland Security Committee on the planning of the White House dinner doesn't even come close to meeting the standard for asserting executive privilege, let alone for concluding that the President's interests in protecting those communications trumps the committee's performance of its legitimate oversight function.

Perhaps Mr. Gibbs chose not to use the term “executive privilege” because it would have evoked inconvenient memories of the Bush Administration’s expansive use of executive privilege to frustrate a series of investigations into potential White House wrongdoing. Congressional Democrats were righly angered by that, and it takes little imagination to figure out how they would have reacted had the Bush White House dismisively refused to permit its Social Secretary to testify under similar circumstances. The Democrats will no doubt give Obama a free pass this time, but the incident sounds an alarming warning bell that Obama will apparently follow the lead of his Republican predecessor – as he already has on other issues – and adopt an expansive view of executive privilege.

It would perhaps have been naïve to expect otherwise; the arrogance of power is not confined to one party. But Obama was supposed to be different. Isn't that why people voted for him?  He pledged to change the culture of secrecy that pervaded the halls of the Bush White House and usher in an era of unprecedented transparency and openness in government.

That apparently, was another change we should not have believed in. As the French would say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.