In 1973 my father ruined the family vacation by watching the Watergate hearings every minute of every day.
I was a teenager. I thought he had lost his mind. So boring. Not to mention tedious, contentious, picayune.
Last week I logged more hours of TV than I had in years — plus tuned into radio every time I got in the car. The Trump impeachment hearings ruined my week. Tedious, contentious and picayune — but anything but boring.
I have my views, as I am sure you have yours. But I am thinking ahead to Thanksgiving … and who’s going to sit where.
Hour after hour I listened raptly to the dozen or so fact witnesses, but my eye kept returning to Reps. Schiff and Nunes. The smug and the petulant, I dubbed them. Yet sadly the two Gentlemen from California are a mirror of ourselves.
Schiff and Nunes missed the opportunity to rise above their apparent mutual disdain and model for the millions of us watching — here and around the world — how to keep the main thing the main thing.
I have my notions of what the main thing is, and you have yours. But the Real Main Thing is you + me. The country itself. This week’s field trip to the sausage factory has been unbearably painful. But to emerge more or less intact should be the number one goal of The Chair and Ranking Member.
For example, the two might have shown us how to acknowledge each other as legitimate participants representing legitimate interests. Would it be so hard for Rep. Schiff to accede to the GOP request for a broader slate of witnesses? If their case is so strong, why protest so much? Why not bend over backwards to be fair, even magnanimous?
Would it be so hard for Rep. Nunes to acknowledge that there’s a lot of smoke here, and it’s valid for Congress to look into such questions? And please stop denigrating public servants. Rather than a conniving deep state, the diplomats we heard from provide deep ballast, and it’s a good thing they do, given the fisticuffs on the bridge.
After all, what goes around comes around.
If our elected officials could do that, then maybe we could do that. The whole gaping world would be astounded that this raucous populace found a way through the darkness, a bit worse for wear, but thankful for the system that’s holding us together right now.
Good luck with dinner.