I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Sam Rayburn. It’s a nostalgia thing for a guy who’s 62 years dead.
“Mr. Sam,” as he was widely known, gripped the House Speaker’s gavel for 17 years, worked with three presidents in both parties, and when the old Democrat died in 1961, The New York Times lamented that “it is though a part of the Capitol had fallen down.” Having run the House chamber for so long, he had a lot to say about politics and governance. For instance:
“It was my sole purpose (as Speaker) to help enact such wise and just laws that our common country will by virtue of these laws be a happier and more prosperous country.”
Wow, passing laws for the common good! Put that in a memo for today’s House Republican nihilists, who last week tried and failed three times to award the gavel to an divisive insurrectionist who in 16 years has never once sponsored and passed a bill. They got rid of the only Speaker they had, but he was a bust as well, having done nothing “wise and just” on the legislative front since taking the gavel last January.
What else did Mr. Sam have to say, back in his day?
“One of the beautiful things about service in the House is that personal relationships and personal friendships are not divided by the center aisle. Some of the nearest and dearest friends I have ever had in the House of Representatives were on the (Republican side) of the Speaker’s stand. I hope it may always be so.”
Wow, reaching across the aisle! Today that sounds as archaic as the five-cent cigar and the videocassette. Probably because it’s tough to cultivate friendships with opposition party members when you keep lying to those members – insisting without a shred of evidence, at the behest of a felonious criminal defendant – that the current president was fraudulently elected.
Mr. Sam, who never had to deal with such treasonous behavior, would’ve had something to say about that. His principles were on record:
“I think no punishment could be too severe on anyone who would take a public trust and misuse it.”
Granted, there’s no going back to the good old days. Mr. Sam didn’t always have it easy – he had to manage a shaky coalition of northern liberals and white racist southerners, and he often had to dragoon votes from sizable bloc of moderate Republicans – but back when he ruled the roost, there was ironclad party discipline. Politically speaking, anyone with even a scintilla of Matt Gaetz’ moronic moxie would’ve been buried alive. Rank and file members didn’t run to the microphones to disrupt for the sake of disruption, to flap their yaps just to hear themselves yap. Indeed, Mr. Sam had thoughts about people like that:
“Don’t talk unless you know what you’re talking about…No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.”
But in the aftermath of this month’s House Republican implosion – with nearly two dozen GOPers showing some spine (for once) and blocking the ascent of the execrable Jim Jordan – perhaps there’s reason to hope that Mr. Sam’s spirit has not been extinguished; perhaps enough Republicans have come to realize that the only road back to governance (to avoid another shutdown, to enact emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine) is to forge some kind of working agreement with the Democrats – in the words of Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries, to “embrace bipartisanship and abandon extremism.”
The humiliation of Jordan was a good place to start. Mr. Sam would’ve said good riddance:
“Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.”
House Republicans will soon try (yet again) to elect a Speaker; unfortunately, only two of the current candidates voted in 2021 to certify Joe Biden’s win, which means that the felonious criminal defendant will weigh heavily on the proceedings. So it’s premature to believe that sanity is finally at hand. Mr. Sam always believed that “in a democracy passion may propose, but reason will ultimately dispose,” a homily that seems ill-suited for our age of unreason.
Nevertheless, I detect a thin shaft of sunlight. With Republicans loudly denouncing their own dysfunction, there’s some nascent bipartisan interest in thwarting the bomb throwers and building back for the common good (option #3, here). They might actually be able to govern if more of them see fit to channel Mr. Sam:
“We are all in this thing together whether we be Republican, Democrat, or what not. This Republic is going to live; if we do our duty, if we do the things that will preserve, protect, defend, and perpetuate these great institutions, we will be a free people.”