Four Amendments & A Funeral

Matt Taibbi turns over a few stones and watches what crawls out from under them in this Rolling Stone story from mid-August. And what crawls out is not very pretty. I thought in light of the Democratic Party rolling over on John Roberts' nomination, it was worth another look.

As Taibbi explains, an aide to Bernie Sanders approached him about doing a story on Sanders. Taibbi wasn't interested in doing a garden-variety political profile, but if Sanders was willing to give him an insider's look at the goings-on in Congress Taibbi would be interested. Taibbi was interested in Sanders mainly because of his Independent status, claiming the "socialist" tag is misleading; Sanders, he says, is more of a classic populist outsider: "The mere fact that Sanders signed off on the idea of serving as my guide says a lot about his attitude toward government in general: He wants people to see exactly what he's up against."

Taibbi also arrives at an important moment: against some very long odds, Sanders has introduced and passed three important amendments. By Taibbi's last week in Washington, however, all the amendments were rolled back, "each carefully nurtured amendment perishing in the grossly corrupt and absurd vortex of political dysfunction that is today's U.S. Congress. What began as a tale of political valor ended as a grotesque object lesson in the ugly realities of American politics -- the pitfalls of digging for hope in a shit mountain.

"Sanders, to his credit, was still glad that I had come. "It's good that you saw this," he said. "People need to know."

Taibbi doesn't hesitate to point out the warts in either party. David Drier (R-CA), the current chairman of the House Rules Committee, "is a pencil-necked Christian Scientist from Southern California, with exquisite hygiene and a passion for brightly colored ties. While a dependable enough yes man to have remained Rules chairman for six years now, he is basically a human appendage, a prosthetic attachment on the person of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay."

Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner Jr.: "your basic Fat Evil Prick, perfectly cast as a dictatorial committee chairman: He has the requisite moist-with-sweat pink neck, the dour expression, the penchant for pointless bile and vengefulness."

In one hearing, "The Democrats generally occupy a four-seat row on the far left end of the panel table, and during hearings they tend to sit there in mute, impotent rage, looking like the unhappiest four heads of lettuce to ever come out of the ground."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: "Reid's predecessor as minority leader, Tom Daschle, was a marionette of the banking and credit-card industries whose public persona recalled a hopped-up suburban vacuum-cleaner salesman. In the wake of the Daschle experiment, Reid is the perfect inheritor of the Democratic leadership mantle: a dour, pro-life Mormon with a campaign chest full of casino money. Trying to figure out his motives on this vote proved no less difficult than figuring out what the Democratic Party stands for in general."

So what conclusions does Taibbi draw?

After a month of watching him and other members, I get the strong impression that even the idealists in Congress have learned to accept the body on its own terms. Congress isn't the steady assembly line of consensus policy ideas it's sold as, but a kind of permanent emergency in which a majority of members work day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the Constitution. A largely castrated minority tries, Alamo-style, to slow them down -- but in the end spends most of its time beating calculated retreats and making loose plans to fight another day.

Taken all together, the whole thing is an ingenious system for inhibiting progress and the popular will. The deck is stacked just enough to make sure that nothing ever changes. But just enough is left to chance to make sure that hope never completely dies out. And who knows, maybe it evolved that way for a reason.

If this story does nothing else, it ought to make you more determined than ever to take back this country.