Readers who frequent this website know I am no apologist for the Republican Party but I must question the high dudgeon in which Democrats, the media and even some RINOs have gotten themselves into over the heckling incident during the President’s address to a Joint Session of Congress last night.  OK, I will admit, many Americans were offended by Congressman Joe Wilson’s calling President Obama a liar.  But another group of Americans was equally offended by the President’s calling Republican Members of Congress liars from the Dias.  Besides which, since when have Americans become so persnickety about the manners of politicians who are the very definition of rudeness and boorishness?  Has anyone read Mark Twain or Will Rogers lately?

Well, it all set me to thinking, and so I pose a few questions and observations for you dear reader to ponder:

·      What is worse, the President lying to the public before a Joint Session of Congress (The healthcare system is in extremis and requires urgent overhaul; I will not sign a healthcare bill that adds one dime to the deficit; Nothing in my plan will adversely affect your current insurance) or a Member of Congress calling the President a liar in public?

·      What is worse, the President calling Republican Members of Congress liars from the Dias during an address to a Joint Session of Congress or a Republican Member of Congress calling the President a liar from the floor of the House?

·      What is worse, the President abusing the privilege of addressing a Joint Session of Congress, making a partisan playhouse out of the People’s House for his own political theater and using the Members of Congress as stage props for his own drama or a Member of Congress refusing to go along with the travesty and heckling the President from the cheap seats like some Member of the English Parliament?

·      What is worse, the Republican heckler later apologizing for calling out the President after the President first threatened from the Dias of the House to call out Republican Members of Congress for their lies (for which the President has not apologized to anyone), or the former Republican presidential candidate who gave us this President by his pitiful failure as a candidate blushing in the cheap seats demanding that his heckling fellow Republican apologize?   

The real question is why didn’t the President exhibit courage and respect for the U.S. Congress and do what British prime ministers do regularly, namely take questions from the floor of the House from Members of the Opposition Party rather than hiding behind the majesty of the People’s House to avoid having to answer questions from average Americans or their representatives?  More importantly, why didn’t Republican Members of Congress exhibit courage and respect for the respective bodies in which they serve and insist before turning the Floor of the House over to the President for partisan use that he at least participate in Question Time from the Well of the House during the Joint Session before the departing the Chamber?

Here is a note I sent to the Republican Leadership of both Bodies and the Chairman of the Republican National Committee a week before the Joint-Session fiasco unfolded:

“The President has sought the privilege of addressing the nation on healthcare in a Joint Session of Congress because he wants to speak directly to the American People without having to answer their questions, as he would have to in an unscripted, un-orchestrated town hall meeting.  If the Congress extends this courtesy to the President and shields him from direct questioning by the American People, we believe he should be obliged at least to take questions from the People's representatives. 

“Therefore, as a condition of allowing the President to expropriate the People's House as a playhouse and use the People's representatives as stage trappings to make a political speech to the nation, Republicans should insist on the right of Members to ask the President unscreened questions from the Well of the House after he addresses the nation before he leaves the House Chamber.

“Specifically, the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Minority Leaders of each Body, or their respective designees, should be permitted to ask the President a set number of unscripted and unscreened questions from the Well of the House. 

“We do not know the formal process by which the President requests and the Congress grants him permission to address a Joint Session but we presume there is a formal process of some sort.  We believe the Republican congressional leadership should insert itself into that process and demand that the President answer questions from the Well of the House.  Toward that end, we urge the Republican congressional Leaders to write the Democratic congressional leaders insisting that they obtain agreement from the President to take questions from Members of Congress after his remarks before he is granted permission to address a Joint Session.”

Instead, the Republicans gave the nation Congressman Charles Boustany in response to the president.  And, instead of calling out the President for the two biggest lies of the season—(i) the healthcare system is in extremis and requires urgent comprehensive overhaul lest the sky fall and (ii) excessive healthcare cost is the problem to be solved by more government intervention rather than the symptom of existing government intervention that must be eliminated—Mr. Boustany actually conceded the president’s false premises and then tried to convince the American public Republicans knew better what to do to about it.  

Rather than explaining that the American public is too split over what to do about healthcare to enact ANY reform legislation at this time, Mr. Boustany urged the Democrats to negotiate with Republicans.  Rather than call upon the Congress to discontinue consideration of healthcare legislation until after the midterm elections when a new Congress could take up the issue, he called on this Congress to redouble its efforts.  Rather than putting the White House and Democrats on notice that the Republican Party would stand foursquare with the American public in opposition to the Senate’s using the extraordinary parliamentary procedure called Reconciliation to jam healthcare legislation down the throats of the American People, he ignored the issue altogether.

So, this is what passes for the Loyal Opposition in the U.S. Congress today.  The English House of Commons puts us to shame both in terms of serious debate and good theatre.  As for shameful behavior, self-serving politicians of both political parties regularly bring shame on our great democratic institutions not by their high-blown rhetoric and boorishness but rather by their brazen interventions and their pusillanimous refusal to dismantle the government interventions that are so clearly to blame for so much of what ales America today.