Robert McHenry: U.S. Congress Resumes; Let Us Pray
Tomorrow, September 8, the men and women of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, 111th Congress of the United States, having (like the French) rested from their labors for the month of August, will resume their work. Saints preserve us.
One hundred and fifty years ago, on September 8, 1859, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal:
I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for as I told the storekeeper, the governor was coming here. “Aye,” said he, “and the legislature, too.” “Then I will take two bolts,” said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming.
It was some years later that Mark Twain distilled what Thoreau and his shopkeeping friend understood intuitively into the remark that Congress was America’s only native criminal class. Twain had the advantage of having seen years more of evidence, such as the great Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872-73.
It is conventional to think of Congress as divided between members of the two major political parties, who duel every two years or six for the privilege of governing a nation of free people. Every so often a majority of one party is overthrown, a restive or disgusted body of voters having decided to switch their temporary allegiance to the other one. They do this in the hope that the new members, so recently honest citizens, at least to all appearances, will raise the ethical tone in Washington. After all, as Kin Hubbard once wrote,
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
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