[Dialogue] A Hint of Possibility in the Air

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 by the Chicago Tribune
<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news> 

A Hint of Possibility in the Air 

by Garrison Keillor 

 

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 C 2006, Chicago Tribune

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