'Stand your butt up'

The more obnoxious members of Congress act, the lower the esteem in which Americans hold them, right? According to Gallup, public approval of Congress has dropped to a derisory 13 percent. How could it do otherwise, given the never-ending clown show on Capitol Hill?

Consider last week's Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing. Teamsters President Sean O'Brien was on hand to testify. It was Senator Markwayne Mullin's turn to question the witness. The Oklahoma Republican decided to use his allotted time to fume about a bunch of mocking tweets that O'Brien had posted about him. In June, for example, O'Brien had described the senator as "full of sh*t" and written: "What a moron you are." Then he tweeted out a picture of Mullin perched on a platform to boost his height, needling him with the hashtag #LittleManSyndrome. The accompanying tweet sneered at the senator's "tough guy act" and threw down a challenge: "You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy."

Mullin seemed to think a fistfight was just what the situation called for.

"You want to run your mouth?" he said to O'Brien. "We can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here."

"Okay, that's fine," the Teamster boss answered. "I'd love to do it right now."

"Well, stand your butt up then," Mullin barked.

"You stand your butt up," O'Brien replied.

So the senator stood, all set for a brawl. Which is presumably what would have ensued had the committee's chairman, Bernie Sanders, not banged his gavel angrily and ordered the senator and the witness to cease and desist. "This is a hearing," Sanders raged. "G od knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress. Let's not make it worse."

It is episodes like this that explain why Americans keep telling pollsters they have no respect for Congress and little confidence in the government. Or is it? I was jolted by a line in Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. She speculated that government officials increasingly act this way not to compensate for their own insecurity and inferiority, but because "they're certain the people back home like it." Noonan continued:

Mullin was sharply dressed, in a crisp white shirt camera-ready for his moment. He didn't expect to be outfaced by the union guy: "You stand your butt up." Mullin was showing his base how rough, tough, and macho he is. He's not gonna let any fancy deep-state rules on decorum dictate to him; he's real, authentic, a man. Which he can show by punching and kicking people. Here, watch! I wonder if he's right that the people of Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain, like that sort of thing. It isn't really a compliment to them that he thinks they would.

Of course it isn't only right-wing Republicans who are capable of behaving like brawling punks. Remember former attorney general Eric Holder extolling the virtue of getting into the gutter with Republicans? "When they go low, we kick them," Holder told an audience of Democratic loyalists. A decade earlier it was then-senator Barack Obama who told his supporters that the only way to beat Republicans was to escalate every engagement: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he famously said.

Anger has always been a factor in politics, but in our age it has grown pervasive. If it didn't start with the coarse and vulgar Donald Trump, it certainly worsened once he entered the arena and made it part of his persona to hurl taunts and threats at anyone who displeased him. Voters used to recoil from blatant boorishness and thuggery on the part of political leaders. Now many can't get enough of it. Noonan nailed it: Too many people in politics act like delinquents and louts because "they're certain the people back home like it." Or perhaps because they are delinquents and louts, and were sent to Washington (or to the state house or to city hall) by voters who approve of their crassness.

In a democracy, it is said, the people get the government they deserve. Gallup asks what people think of Congress, and the responses are full of disdain. But is it really Congress we regard with such scorn? Or is it ourselves, for choosing to be governed by such creatures?

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission."