A
Hint Of Possibility In The Air
By Garrison Keillor
10 November, 2006
The Chicago Tribune
So now we have thrown some rascals
out and left some rascals in power and sent some new folks to Washington
to learn the art of rascality, and what in the end, after all the hoopla,
will really change? Or will the town drunk continue to run the municipal
liquor store?
Perhaps there will be some
rational debate on the war. The voters have said they don't want the
30 Years War that Vice President Dick Cheney envisions, so it's time
for him and his friend to start making other arrangements. This happens
all the time in the real world. If you can't accomplish the mission,
then you accept it and find a graceful way out.
The health insurance crisis
may be addressed, and the crippled behemoth that is Homeland Security.
And surely Congress will rediscover the use of the subpoena and require
public servants to account for themselves under oath. This would be
a novelty. After six years of ingenious spin, we could get a history
lesson while we're still young enough to profit from it.
People still care deeply
about our government, despite every invitation to disillusionment. This
is the astonishment. For my generation, the first big blow was the failure
of Washington to get to the truth about the assassination of John F.
Kennedy and then its inability to change a disastrous course in Vietnam.
You stand at the majestic polished wall with the 57,000 names on it,
and you look across the river to Arlington, and here, within one mile,
are two enormous aching sorrows, and a mile behind you is the U.S. Supreme
Court, which threw the election of 2000. Some people killed our president
and got away with it; men were shipped off to die in a lousy war promulgated
by Democrats afraid to be called weak on communism; and an election
was stolen, no protest. And yet we still stroll down to the church and
cast our ballots. We live on hope.
Forty years ago I drove to
Baltimore for a friend's wedding and then, on a powerful urge, veered
off toward Washington. It was night. I drove through a confusing grid
of diagonals and circles, saw the great dome illuminated, drove up to
it and parked and walked in. You could do that then. A few cops stood
around, and you strolled past them and into the rotunda, and stood dazed
and humbled in this space where great men had moved. The tragedy of
secession was played out in these halls, and the New Deal was launched,
and FDR was carried up here after Pearl Harbor to declare World War
II, after which wise men designed the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe
and the GI Bill of Rights that built an American middle class.
It has been a long time since
we had reason to be proud of these people, though they are essentially
the same people as those who accomplished great things. So what's wrong?
One problem with Congress
is that 90 percent of it is ceremonial and so little has to do with
elucidation. The Honorable meets with representatives of the American
Beer Can Association, the Swizzle Stick Foundation, the League of Tutu
Manufacturers, and poses for photos and listens to their pitches, and
then goes to the floor and proclaims Eugene P. Fenstermaker Day, and
then to a subcommittee hearing to read a two-page statement praising
the arts as a triumphant manifestation of the human spirit, and then
back to the office to welcome 10 fat men in beanies and the 4-Hers from
Hooperville, then off to the banquet of the American Ferret Federation,
and seldom during the day is the Honorable ever challenged or questioned
or asked to listen to anything that wasn't vetted and paid for. The
Great Personage is either regarded with servile deference or heartily
abused by bloggers. This is not a good life for an inquiring mind.
You meet congressmen in private
and they're perfectly thoughtful and well-spoken people, nothing like
the raging idiots they impersonate in campaign ads, and you think, maybe
Congress needs more privacy. Send them off on unchaperoned trips to
see the world firsthand. More closed-door caucuses where they can say
what they think without worrying that one stray phrase may kill them.
Or maybe Congress simply
needed more Democrats. We are a civil bunch, owing to our contentious
upbringings. With a smart, well-spoken woman for speaker instead of
that lumbering, mumbling galoot who covered for the Current Occupant,
perhaps life will get more interesting. Maybe they'll do something good.
It's possible.
Garrison Keillor is an author
and host of "A Prairie Home Companion."
Copyright © 2006, Chicago
Tribune
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