Hearings impaired
BROOKS, DAVID
Hearings Impaired: A Week on Capitol Hill By David Brooks Each day on Capitol Hill congressmen gather to ask questions they already know the answers to. They consider testimony on issues they've...
...I just arrived from New York...
...Thurmond completes his questions with admirable surety of purpose and without a single detour or sign of nervousness, despite the outbreak of swine influenza that Hatch somewhat mysteriously says is occurring on his necktie...
...Thurmond: Mr...
...Allen: It's good to be here...
...Instead 10 senators flit in and out, dropping a little sweet nectar into Jane Alexander's ear...
...They consider testimony on issues they've already decided upon...
...Allen: Yes, I was born and raised there...
...We shouldn't amend the Bill of Rights unless there is a clear and pressing need, he says...
...If a tree fell in a Senate hearing and there were no senators around to hear it, would it make a noise...
...Looks can be deceiving...
...But he says the country is nonetheless caught in a fractious cycle that has it divided along gender, race, and ethnic lines...
...And as they walk the corridors of power in the course of their daily duties, they constantly remember that they owe it everything...
...Gregg is a thin, sharp man whose face suggests fiscal austerity, but he too praises the NEA, as do the rest of the GOP hummingbirds...
...There is some element of political theater, but in 95 percent of the cases it's not particularly good theater, and nobody pays attention except the lobbyists who are paid to be there...
...The gentle hearings take a bizarre turn as Pat Leahy, the ranking minority member, is complaining about the number of judicial nominations that are stalled in the Senate...
...Let us review the transcript...
...That's as graphic and compelling an argument as I can think of for this program...
...Even the veterans who have come to support the flag amendment tense up when the camera pans toward them and don an expression of imposing dignity...
...Thurmond reads his questions from a script, so only his staff need pay attention to the proceedings, and there is no danger he will ad-lib, no matter what the answer to his question might be...
...The chair leans over to consult Inhofe's top aide, a 6-ft.-tall invisible rabbit named Harvey...
...Another strategy to combat Antitrust Attention Deficit Disorder (AADD) is the one employed by Sen...
...From where I sit I have a nice view of the veterans shifting from foot to foot all around me, and especially the medals they are wearing on their hats that denote their combat service, or their time as prisoners of war, or even their having won the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...If all congressional hearings were presided over by inanimate objects, they would be much shorter...
...We are now senatorless...
...Constitution, I find myself immediately surrounded by military folk...
...Public officials from the president on down gaze upon it with reverence...
...Finally the mayor of Dover, Ohio, concludes his testimony...
...The subcommittee is chaired by Slade Gorton, who smiles beatifically over the proceedings, looking as Henry Fonda must have looked while caught in a rush of sweet nostalgia...
...In the course of his rich life, Campbell was once a counselor in Folsom County Prison and judged an art show there...
...The senators weave flattery and counter-flattery into a tight basket that will hold next year's appropriation without losing a drop...
...And where were you born, Mr...
...It's nice to be treated as a superior by people who are actually superior to you...
...Drawn to the mysterious, I've spent the past week attending hearings, trying to figure out why they exist and hoping to get a sense of what the current Congress is up to...
...The only sour note to be heard this morning will come from Campbell, in fact, who is offended by a "Dear Colleague" letter from House Republican Wally Herger...
...Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety ROOM 406, Dirksen Building Some unfair critics of his may have called him an empty suit, but at the moment Sen...
...Nobody needs to contemplate an amendment to the Constitution that would ban the desecration of the television camera, because nobody in this country would even think of insulting this national icon...
...The witness carries on, gamely trying to persuade the chair of the burdensome nature of these regulations...
...The witness is the mayor of Dover, Ohio, and he has flown in to oppose the regulations...
...By the end of his statement we should have no doubt that we are in the presence of not just one but two discerning champions of art and culture...
...But the pressing issue of "particulate matter" is apparently too grave to allow for any horseplay...
...Allen...
...My tie today is swine influenza...
...The mayor offers his testimony to the empty chair...
...A number of observations need to be made about this colloquy...
...The next witness, a mayor from Vermont, begins his testimony: "Mr...
...He said he had to go to the Senate floor to vote, but he commanded us to go ahead and begin the hearing without him...
...Allen, have you ever been to New York...
...Hatch: I wore a Jerry Garcia tie yesterday and you didn't even notice...
...When it appears, every man and woman, and politicians most of all, snaps to attention...
...Chairman, members of the committee...
...There are 14 witnesses, a dozen staffers, and about 250 lobbyists in the room, and as commanded, we go on with the hearing, even though there is no senator on hand to hear it...
...And so the gentle humming continues, with Alexander nodding peacefully...
...He had been the only senator in the room...
...But there are plenty of seats open at the press table, so I squeeze past the old geezers and slide comfortably into my chair...
...House Judiciary Committee, Constitution Subcommittee ROOM 2141, Rayburn Building Ilove being around military people...
...I'm pleased to be testifying before you ...," he says to the large leather-bound object behind the table...
...I've lived there my whole life...
...For the benefit of readers, it should be noted that this final question was directed at Klein and was not made in reference to Jerry Garcia, songwriting, Hatch's tie collection, Leahy's male-pattern baldness, or any of the other topics that were touched upon in the Hatch-Leahy exchange...
...But the exchange also suggests that the subject of antitrust regulation does not really seize the imaginations of the senators who sit through long hearings on the subject...
...Allen...
...If somebody were to draw 52 stars on a sheet with 15 stripes, would they be able to desecrate that...
...A lot of work goes into these congressional hearings—stacking the witnesses and preparing the testimony—but nobody seems exactly clear on what they are for...
...I ready my spitballs...
...It has to be said that the chair is managing the hearings efficiently...
...At one point I motion to one of the elderly veterans that he should take a seat at the press table he is standing next to...
...I've just completed a new movie, which I shot there...
...I expect I will show up one day and a television camera will be hanging on the flagpole atop the Capitol building and senators will drop to one knee when the C-SPAN bus passes by...
...The audience shows no impulse to rampage down to the EPA to change the rules that prevent federally subsidized minuscule-basket weavers from ripping the chest feathers out of hummingbirds...
...Now could you explain why you approved the Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger without any conditions...
...And it's true that one rarely hears of a glockenspiel-related homicide or a serial killing by a cast member of The Fanta-sticks, although the link between NEA funding and the murder rate is one that has been little explored until now...
...Banning flag burning would limit exactly the sort of freedom the flag is meant to represent...
...There is one symbol in Washington that commands the awed respect of everyone...
...Hatch is a mighty fine songwriter...
...It occurs that Sen...
...We learn this astounding fact at a hearing for a universally admired lawyer, Joel Klein, whom the president has nominated to head the antitrust division at the Justice Department...
...Maybe he doesn't want to sink to our level...
...Him by choice and me by necessity...
...Campbell can pay someone a compliment in such a manner that it reflects as much glory on himself as it does the recipient...
...Campbell, now recalling his days as an art teacher, tells us that some of the craftsmen can no longer use certain materials because they are protected under the Endangered Species Act...
...At first I think it might be like being in junior high when the teacher left the room...
...I say despite the odds because the affair is adrape in sentiment...
...A number of the veterans gently nod...
...Hatch isn't...
...I'd like to give you some background so you can understand how these regulations will affect us...," the mayor says later on...
...When I walk in late to a House hearing on the Flag Protection Amendment to the U.S...
...Thurmond: Have you ever made a movie, Mr...
...He looks at me pleasantly and declines...
...Campbell should be named a Living Cultural Treasure and paid to roam the halls of the Senate evermore, with his ponytail and turquoise jewelry lending a little color to Republican ranks, and so continue to display his lifelong commitment to the art of the two-way compliment...
...I don't see why schoolteachers always feel compelled to flog their students' views, as if these half-formed regurgita-tions are somehow wisdom from the deepest philosophers in the universe...
...But there is a superb exchange between Gary Ack-erman, a roly-poly Democrat from Queens, and Henry Hyde, the avuncular Republican from Illinois...
...I'm a Grateful Dead fan myself and Sen...
...My faith in the American common man is restored...
...I expect the lobbyist from the National Association of Manufacturers to start giving noogies to the lobbyist from the Environmental Defense Fund...
...I even said I'd buy you a tie-dyed shirt...
...Herger's letter disparages federally funded basket weaving—"as if to imply basket weaving is not important," Campbell huffs...
...Bumpers notes that he "never ran across a murderer who played in the high school band or who had a role in the senior class play...
...This was back in the days when Arkansas governors visited the pen voluntarily...
...So perhaps it's fitting that I should sit while they stand, for as a member of the media, even of the lowly print variety, I am still a member of the tribe that wields the mighty camera...
...He also raises practical objections: Would one be allowed to desecrate a picture of the flag...
...Allen: New York, New York...
...I'm talking, of course, about the television camera...
...And this situation prompts the reflection: Boy, is this country screwed up when a veteran of a POW camp has to stand while some shlump with a magazine job gets to sit...
...Thurmond: That's very nice...
...Campbell holds up an Indian basket...
...A Democrat, Dale Bumpers, recalls his days as the governor of Arkansas, when he would visit the state penitentiary...
...Hatch that we'd be the only two people at the Grateful Dead with short hair...
...I thought I'd say it...
...Strom Thurmond...
...And when they get the chance, they are happy to break out and begin talking like human beings, even if abnormally self-obsessed ones...
...Of the mentions of Iwo Jima there can be no counting...
...Hatch: I wouldn't say that...
...Hyde acknowledges there is no rash of flag burnings around the country...
...If Thurmond were asked to guest host the Tonight Show, the proceedings would go like this: Thurmond: Ladies and gentlemen, Woody Allen...
...The quality of the art was remarkable, he reports...
...Great philosophical questions leap to mind...
...That doesn't have to do with what we're doing here today...
...This sort of Indian basket, the senator informs us, can be woven so tight that it can hold water...
...The chair does not respond...
...A teacher has brought along her 27 fifth-graders (they get to sit down), and when it is her turn to testify she reads from her students' essays on what the flag means to them...
...Leahy: I told Sen...
...I've never heard them...
...Despite all odds, this hearing does feature shafts of high intelligence...
...He's among those who've come to a Senate hearing to compliment Jane Alexander, the actress-turned-head of the National Endowment for the Arts...
...The chair, committing a faux pas, does not thank him for his remarks...
...Finally Ackerman argues that the amendment responds to no crisis...
...Senate Judiciary Committee ROOM 226, Dirksen Building He wasn't nominated while he was alive, and now that he's dead it is too late, but had Jerry Garcia been nominated for the Supreme Court, Senate Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch would have greeted the nomination with an open mind...
...Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Robert Bennett of Utah look like the sort of senators who would want to cut arts funding...
...Inhofe had just opened a hearing on some new EPA air-quality regulations when his beeper went off...
...Leahy: I invited you...
...This is an instructive reminder of the sort of relationship that can develop between two senior committee members, and prompts the observation that committee chairmen are from Venus and ranking minority members are from Mars...
...But I shouldn't be too surprised because this hearing is all about the veneration of a national symbol...
...The hearing room is packed, and all the audience chairs are taken, so jammed around the back door is a score of veterans—men and women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s with blue VFW hats and hearing aids...
...Senate Appropriations Committee, Interior Subcommittee ROOM 192, Dirksen Building Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell is compulsively autobiographical, and his opening statement on federal arts funding begins with memories of his student days in Japan...
...Suddenly he digresses...
...He argues that the amendment is an attempt to bring divided Americans together and at least make a symbolic gesture in the name of civility and decency...
...The first is that senators Hatch and Leahy behave like an old married couple, completing each other's sentences, teasing each other with familiar jokes, and even purposely treading on each other's raw spots...
...James Inhofe is an empty chair...
...Some of the craftsmen weave these tiny baskets from the hairs of ferns and from the chest feathers of hummingbirds...
...Acker-man, who opposes the amendment, says the flag is a national symbol and not a religious icon...
...Leahy: I'd like to say that Sen...
...Bumpers's autobiographical musing bestirs Campbell, who matches it with his own...
...In public, an officer in, say, the Marine Corps treats people like me with respect and irreproachable deference even though I know in his heart he regards us as soft, contemptible worms...
...They name these codgers "Living Cultural Treasures" and give them a stipend for life...
...It can be woven so small that sometimes miniature baskets are displayed (thanks to NEA grants) on the head of a pin...
...David Brooks is a senior editor of The Weekly Standard...
...The Japanese reward artists who have spent their entire lives working in a specific genre, like bonsai or pen and ink, he says...
...He assures Alexander that while the barbarians in the House may have a debate over federal arts funding, over on the Senate side, art soothes the savage breast...
Vol. 2 • May 1997 • No. 34
