Unstatesmanlike conduct

by David Benjamin

““January 6 happened, and … I will tell you something. If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.” 

— Marjorie Taylor Greene

 

MADISON, Wis.— During the same week that Kevin McCarthy sniveled, groveled and weaseled his way into an impotent Speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives, Quay Walker got thrown out of a football game. 

The connection between these seemingly disparate events hit me like a forearm shiver. Here’s what happened.

In an NFL game between Green Bay and Detroit, Walker, a Packers rookie, shoved a medic who had rushed onto Lambeau Field to attend an injured Lions player. Walker’s retribution began instantly. Referees flagged him for unsportsmanlike conduct and assessed Green Bay a penalty. A moment later, after viewing a replay of his sin, officials banished Walker from the game.

Cameramen who pursued Walker toward the locker room recorded a tearful young man, distraught and inconsolable over his impetuosity. Within days, the office of the commissioner of the National Football League, although demurring to suspend Walker for future games, had levied a fine of $13,261. Before the NFL sanction, Walker had issued an apology that read, “I reacted off of my emotions again and take full responsibility of making another stupid decision. Since then I’ve questioned myself on why did I do what I did when the trainer was doing his job!! I was wrong!!”

In sports, this is hardly an unusual cause-and effect incident. Anyone who watches football knows that a college player penalized for “targeting” an opponent, by using his helmet as a weapon, is ejected immediately and suspended for his next game. Routinely, sucker punches, fistfights, attacks on fans and even taunting incidents are penalized in professional sports. In Major League Baseball, any attempt to gain an advantage unethically—cheating, sign-stealing, performance-enhancing drugs—is grounds for severe punishment. 

In 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox, including the immortal Shoeless Joe Jackson, were banned from baseball for life after cheating in the World Series. Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis justified this extreme measure as necessary to preserve the integrity of the national pastime. 

There exists no one, however, with the power to preserve the integrity of the U.S. Congress. This duty is left to moral midgets like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. Lately, a wave of travesties have exposed Congress’ incapacity for grownup behavior. For example, the day before Green Bay played Detroit, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) voted “present” on the vote for Speaker, petulantly denying the coveted gavel to McCarthy for the 14th time in a week. This prompted a McCarthy ally, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) to lunge at Gaetz in an evident attempt to beat the hell out of him. Before he could land a blow, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) wrapped a hand around Rogers’ face and pulled him away. 

Shades of Quay Walker, ne?

Except, of course, none of the House combatants setting a poor example for young Walker faced the slightest sanction for their unstatesmanlike conduct. Afterward, Gaetz—who remains under investigating for humping at least one underage girl—graciously forgave Rogers. “I don’t think there should be any punishment or reprisal,” said Gaetz, “just because he had an animated moment.”

Animated moment?

Perhaps the declaration by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a “traitor” subject to the death penalty was also an animated moment? Or when Paul Gosar (R-Az.) tweeted images of himself, Rep. Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R. Colo.), slashing to death Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to death with a sword and threatening to kill president Joe Biden was just one of those impetuous anime moments that GOP flesh is heir to.

Perhaps similarly animated was Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), when he disrupted president Barack Obama’s 2009 joint address to Congress by shouting “You lie!”

In a bow to fairness, I’ve struggled to find similar recent breaches by intemperate Democrats against Congress’ tradition of collegial decorum, but I’m stumped. The last Democrat to actually attack a Republican on Capitol Hill was Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.), who used a cane in 1856 to batter Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) almost to death on the Senate floor. This came after Sumner metaphorically accused Brooks’ colleague, Sen. Andrew Butler (D-S.C.). of taking “a mistress … who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery.”

One cannot help but objectively conclude that lies, slanders, threats of violence, Trumpist hyperbole and juvenile name-calling have become the stock-in-trade of at least one of the parties currently presiding in Congress. The danger of contagion looms over the entire body and could spread to the Senate. The big question posed by all these unseemly contretemps on Capitol Hill is how to make our elected  legislators behave at least as politely toward one another as do our gridiron gladiators and the pituitary giants of the NBA. 

What we need, obviously, is a commissioner, one guy or woman, like Roger Goodell in the NFL or Rob Manfred in the Major Leagues, with the unilateral, arbitrary and unchallenged power to restore and enforce decorum in the 118th MAGA Congress before it devolves into gang warfare and atomic wedgies. Our Commissioner of Congress would, of course, have to be a paragon of probity with no political agenda. Two names that came immediately to my mind were Bob Dole and Colin Powell—both, alas, unavailable. Perhaps we could install a respected historian who has chronicled the vagaries of Washington across the centuries, a Jon Meacham or Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Transgressions punishable by ejection, suspension and fines would not apply, of course, to speech protected by the First Amendment, but profanity, gratuitous insults, ad hominem attacks or any mention of someone’s mother would fall under the Commissioner’s purview. The ultimate criterion for a violation of Congressional couth could sensibly follow the example set by Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”

Offenders, once expelled and suspended, would have to appeal—with all due humility (ideally, sackcloth and ashes)—to the Commissioner, who would not only judge the sincerity of their apologies but would have complete discretion on the amount of the fine that must be paid before the intemperate Congressperson would be allowed back onto the playground.

Fines, of course, would be exorbitant, punitive and unavailable for appeal. They would be assessed not against the offender’s salary, but would hit where they hurt the most—from the Congressperson’s campaign treasury. 

Before a crime reached the Commissioner’s office, the first line of defense—a referee or umpire—would have to be introduced into Congress itself. The typical zebra-stripe shirt and a whistle, appropriate in sports, would be undignified. I picture, instead, an austere figure, dressed head-to-toe in funereal black, like an undertaker in a Dickens novel, ideally wearing a pince-nez and carrying a polished cane but—unfortunately—without the stovepipe hat. 

I can hear the voice of this arbiter restoring civility—instantly, resoundingly—with three sharp and chilling (and forever unlikely) words: “Gentlemen! Ladies! Desist!”