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Lean In to Partisanship
The January 6th House Select Committee hearings, which took place last Wednesday, were troubling, to put it mildly. Both the testimony of the witnesses from D.C. and Capitol police and the new video footage made it very clear that the Capitol rioters wished to stage a hard coup against the pro forma process of certifying Joe Biden’s election to the presidency. But I also found it troubling that all parties were adamantly insisting that the Committee was non-partisan.
I understand why. The Democrats were eager to define the Committee as an effort to uncover the truth about the events of that day rather than an opportunity to trash the Republicans. The presence of two Republicans on the Committee was designed to show the Democrats were operating in good faith. The motives of House Speaker Pelosi are commendable. But still, under the circumstances, I am not sure this is adequate.
I do not wish to sound like a broken record on this theme, but it bears repeating. Since Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract With America,” U.S. politics has been transformed from a Madisonian procedural republic to a gladiatorial arena where friends square off against enemies. This is the vision endorsed in the political theology of Carl Schmitt. That this transformation has happened is nothing short of catastrophic. But it is also a fact. Democrats and Republicans concerned with the norms and institutions…
