Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (45 page)

The others groaned.

Labrador then read aloud from another passage:
Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that does the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.

“As if!” the Idaho tea partier snickered.

“So do we wear the button?” someone asked.

“I intend to,” said Duncan.

“Not if everyone else does—I don’t like going with the pack,” grinned Labrador.

They were referring to the large red button Duncan was wearing on the right lapel of his suit. 1000
DAYS
, it read—signifying the amount of time that had elapsed since the Senate had last passed a budget. Duncan’s office had printed 250 of the buttons and distributed them to his Republican colleagues. Perhaps half of them showed up to that morning’s conference wearing the button—prompting Majority Leader Eric Cantor to exclaim into the microphone, “Great idea, whoever thought of that!” To which several loudly replied, “Jeff Duncan!”

But conference chairman Jeb Hensarling had also cautioned the members that morning, “The press is going to be watching you tonight. If you’re texting or emailing during the president’s speech, that’s going to wind up on YouTube.” And Boehner had been even more direct: “We’re going to maintain decorum. No shouting. No wearing anything. No signs”—the latter admonishment due to Jeff Landry, who during President Obama’s “pass this jobs bill” joint session speech last September had held up a placard that read
DRILLING = JOBS
. Landry was now proudly employing that slogan in his primary battle. That Boehner viewed such displays as unseemly was yet another reminder of the philosophical gulf between the Speaker and his unruly young charges.

Immediately following that morning’s conference, as Duncan headed toward the House chamber so as to deliver a speech during morning hour debate, he had run into House Administration Committee chairman Dan Lungren, who told the freshman, “You can’t wear that on the floor.” Duncan reluctantly complied. He took his place in the line of morning-hour stalwarts: Walter Jones, who once again exhorted Congress and the president to “pull out our troops now” from Afghanistan; Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who paid tribute to the recent death of former Georgia Congressman Ed Jenkins, a proto–Blue Dog who served from 1977 to 1993, at a time when moderates who worked
across the aisle were a flourishing breed; and Sheila Jackson Lee, who upon arrival in the chamber promptly deposited a pile of belongings on a third-row middle-aisle seat—thereby reserving it so that she could once again be seen that evening by a national audience, lit up in her bright green dress with her arms around the president of the United States as he fought his way to the podium.

When it came Jeff Duncan’s turn to speak that morning, he began by saying, “
All around the Hill today
, you’ll see members of Congress wearing a red button,” and held it up for the benefit of C-SPAN viewers. “One thousand days, acting irresponsibly.”

That night at dinner, Jeff Duncan declared to the others, “I’m gonna wear the button until someone tells me to take it off.”

The other five nodded their approval, though none of them vowed to do the same. The Cajun Caucus paid up, piled into two cars, and made their way across the 14th Street Bridge, bound for the Capitol.

Once inside the impossibly crowded chamber, Duncan got separated
from the others. Pressed up against him was a senior House Republican who peered down at Duncan’s red button and quietly suggested that maybe this was not the time or place for such a display. The freshman slid the button off his lapel and put it in his pocket. He plopped down in the first empty seat he could find. Surrounding him were U.S. senators. Following a rogue impulse, Duncan pulled out the 1000
DAYS
button and showed it to those around him. Archconservative Senator Mike Lee of Utah bobbed his head in approval. Democrat Tom Udall glanced at it with what Duncan interpreted as welling regret at his party’s dereliction. Satisfied that he had made his point, the South Carolinian put his button away.

From his seat in the third row, Duncan could see a thin woman in a red jacket and glasses. It was Gabrielle Giffords. Last week the Arizona congresswoman had announced, in a heart-wrenching video marked by her clear eyes but halting speech as a result of her gunshot wound, that she would be resigning from Congress. Duncan joined his colleagues in giving Giffords a standing ovation. Though he’d never had an actual conversation with her, Jeff Duncan felt an ineffable kinship with the brave young woman who had come to symbolize the House—its earnestness and resilience, but also its mortal frailty.

He would stand and applaud a couple of other times that evening as the president spoke, a game showing of comity. But of course, the address was not intended for Jeff Duncan’s ears—though in a sense, it was aimed squarely at him, campaign verbiage hurled by a wounded incumbent against what Obama hoped to frame as a Do-Nothing Congress:
I intend to fight obstruction with action. . . . Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away. . . . The opponents of action are out of excuses. . . . Both parties agree on these ideas. So put them in a bill, and get it on my desk this year. . . . So far, you haven’t acted. Well, tonight I will
. . .

The Republicans poured out of the chamber the moment the address ended, as if repelled by force. Many of them as well as Democrats headed to Statuary Hall, garishly lit by dozens of camera crews—tonight a rotunda of comment seekers and comment givers, all haloed by marble scowls of statesmen from another time.
Duncan was among them
. He was scheduled to be interviewed by a Hearst TV channel—and for the occasion, the freshman had refastened his 1000
DAYS
button to his lapel. But the crush of bodies was even more oppressive than in the House chamber. Standing all the way at the front of the line, already miked up, was Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy. Duncan counted fifteen interviewees waiting between McCarthy and himself.

“Forget it,” he finally muttered. Duncan pushed his way back in the opposite direction from the media scrum, toward the House chamber, then out into the Capitol’s main hallway, and finally out the eastern door, where the president’s limousine awaited . . . where, aside from the Capitol police and Secret Service, there was nobody at all. He drew a fatigued breath and trudged along through the starless winter evening, looking no different from any other overworked Washingtonian in a suit except, of course, for that red button on his lapel. Duncan was proud of his little invention. As for the other 249 buttons? Likely they were already in desk drawers, mixed up among paper clips and rubber bands and scraps of other once-great ideas. Perhaps a button or two would survive the year, the decade, and even beyond, a rusty artifact for another generation to puzzle over: what were those thousand days, and who felt such a need to mark them—are they the stuff of statues or only of fighting words, and is it fair to ask what good they did . . .

Notes

PROLOGUE: EVENING, JANUARY 20, 2009

The venue was the Caucus Room
: Interviews with ten of the fifteen participants. Also Matt Bai, “Newt. Again,”
New York Times Magazine,
February 25, 2009.

The U.S. unemployment rate
: Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 10, 2009.

First Federal Congress
: Robert V. Remini,
The House: The History of the House of Representatives
(Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2007); Rufus Wilmot Griswold,
The Republican Court; or, American Society in the Days of Washington,
1867.

“There are few shining geniuses”
: John Thornton Kirkland,
Works of Fisher Ames: With a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence,
1854, p. 33.

“crazed with the chase”
: ibid., p. 74.

approval rating of 9 percent
: CBS News/
New York Times
poll, October 25, 2011.

CHAPTER ONE: TEA PARTY FRESHMAN

“Mr. Duncan from South Carolina”
: Author personally observed.

Congressman-elect Jeff Duncan
: Interviews with Duncan, November 18–19, 2010.

“I Believe”
:
http://www.jeffduncan.com
, campaign website.

the three House office buildings
: Architect of the Capitol website.

Duncan surveyed
: Author personally observed.

Glenn Nye
: Interview with Nye, May 2, 2011.

“votes with Nancy Pelosi 83 percent”
: Scott Rigell campaign ad “Her Congressman,” October 2010.

met in HC-5
: Interviews with five members present at the meeting.

CHAPTER TWO: THE DEAN

At a weeknight party
: Author personally observed.

“but then again”
: Interview with Dingell, April 21, 2011.

a town hall in Romulus
: Video of town hall, August 6, 2009.

Dingell had faced
:
National Journal Almanac
website, last updated July 1, 2011.

Michigan congressional delegation
: Interviews with two of the attendees.

CHAPTER THREE: BAYONETS

a swearing-in ceremony
: Author personally observed. Also interviews with West, January 12 and 25, 2011.

John Lewis
: Interview with West, January 12, 2011.

James Clyburn
: Interview with West, December 9, 2010.

Allen Bernard West
: Interview with West, December 9, 2010. Also for Hamoodi interrogation, interview with Neal Puckett, June 28, 2011. Also for 2008 and 2010 elections, interview with Ron Klein, June 4, 2011.

plotting his campaign
: Interview with West, January 3, 2011.

Boehner flew in
: Interview with West, December 9, 2010.

Buck McKeon
: Author personally observed. Also interview with West, January 25, 2011.

new working calendar
: West letter to Cantor, December 16, 2010. Cantor staff response: Michael O’Brien, “GOP freshman charges Cantor with crafting lax work schedule,”
Hill,
December 16, 2010. Cantor nonresponse: Interview with West, January 25, 2011.

CHAPTER FOUR: CITIZENS IN THE DEVIL’S CITY

Duncan held a prayer breakfast
: Assistant Emily Umhoefer personally observed.

“May this Territory”
: Fourth Annual Message of John Adams, November 22, 1800.

Washington in its first few years
: Remini,
The House;
Griswold,
The Republican Court;
Benjamin Perley Poore,
Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis,
vol. 1, 1885. Daniel Carroll: John Michael Vlach, “The Quest for a Capital,” Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project lecture series; also Duddington Place website. “Spider lobbyists”: Perley Poore,
Perley’s Reminiscences,
p. 33.

Ellmers was a registered
: Interview with Ellmers, December 21, 2010. McCarthy trip: Interview with McCarthy, December 10, 2010. “Please let go of my arm”: YouTube video of the incident, uploaded June 14, 2010. Two NRCC sources verify that the two who accosted Etheridge were NRCC interns. Victory mosque: Interview with Ellmers, December 21, 2010; also “No Mosque at Ground Zero” TV ad, September 22, 2010.

Farenthold was a shy
: Interview with Farenthold, January 18, 2011. “Fluke winner”: David Wasserman,
Cook Political Report,
December 17, 2010. Reception buffet: Author personally observed.

At 2:03
P.M.
on January 5
: Author personally observed. Boehner and Dingell: YouTube video, January 5, 2011. Cantor and Democrat remarks:
Congressional Record,
January 5, 2011.

read sections of the U.S. Constitution
: Author personally observed. Goodlatte:
Goodlatte press release, January 5, 2011. Duncan: Interview with Duncan, January 18, 2011. Ames and First Amendment: 109 1
Annals of Congress
766, August 20, 1789; also see Marc M. Arkin, “Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames,”
Buffalo Law Review,
Spring 1999. (Curiously, none of Ames’s surviving writings mentions his authorship of the First Amendment’s final language—perhaps because the great orator had little use for any amendments to the Constitution, viewing them as a sop to anti-Federalists that would “stimulate the stomach as little as hasty-pudding.” Kirkland,
Works,
p. 54.)

CHAPTER FIVE: GABBY

Blue Dogs hosted
: Interviews with five of the attendees.

After raising
: Carolyn Classen, “How did Giffords win?”
Tucson Citizen,
November 14, 2010.

Her boomerang trajectory
: Vera Fedchenko, “27-year-old charts Ariz. firm’s course,”
Tire Business,
February 16, 1998; Lorrie Cohen, “Goodyear buys out El Campo,”
Tucson Citizen,
July 3, 1999; Emily Heil and Anna Palmer, “Motorcycle Mama,”
Roll Call,
May 5, 2008; Gabrielle Birkner, “Giffords’ Jewish journey: From Israel to service and study,”
Forward,
January 24, 2011.