Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.
Susan Walsh/Associated Press Senator Al Franken at the hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. The United States Senate, which still flatters itself with the misnomer “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” counts a former Major League Baseball player, an organic wheat farmer, far too many lawyers and a member who describes herself as a mom in tennis shoes among its select 100.
Last year, when this club added someone with a most unlikely working background — Al Franken, the professional comedian who is the junior senator from Minnesota — I thought the upper chamber would finally get something it most lacked: a sharp sense of humor.
Like many who followed Franken’s career since his early days as a writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live,” I anticipated a flash of funny from him after he waded into the pool of poll-tested, pundit-vetted, lobbyist-cowering politicians.
Would we see a hint of the man who nailed former Senator Paul Simon’s monotone explanation for “why I wear the bow tie.” Or a bit of what inspired his mock political reporter to strap a satellite dish atop his head — “the one-man mobile uplink?” Not a chance. The author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations,” the creator of the self-affirming moron Stuart Smalley, was nowhere to be found.
On the campaign trail, Franken was wonkish — understandably so. During the long recount and legal challenge of his 2008 Senate race, which resulted in Franken’s win by 312 votes, people who worked with the comedian said he was intensely disciplined and focused, with nary a snarky remark, even in private.
The satirist died when the senator took office. But just as Jon Tester did not give up his lentils and wheat on the homestead in Montana when he became a senator, Franken should not forsake his field of laughs.
Thus, it was heartening to see him make at least a feeble attempt at mocking this enfeebled institution the other day, grimacing during remarks by the dour Senator Mitch McConnell.
“This isn’t Saturday Night Live, Al,” McConnell scolded Franken. Franken promptly apologized. Months earlier, John McCain was upset at another Franken breach, when he refused to grant a fellow senator more bloviating time beyond his allotment.
“It harms the comity of the Senate,” McCain complained.
If ever there was a place in need of more comedy, and less comity, it’s the U.S. Senate.
Cobwebbed by senseless rituals, speeches which no one listens to and rules that make it all but impossible to act on the will of the people, the Senate cries for more ridicule, decorum breaches and old-fashioned wit.
Yes, they should be lauded for pulling off two of the most significant reforms of modern times, in health care and financial regulation. But those rare legislative triumphs almost didn’t happen, and probably will not be repeated — by either party on any major issue — for a generation. The default mode in the Senate, less by design than by institutional arteriosclerosis, is insulated decay.
In a devastating profile this month of the broken Senate, George Packer of The New Yorker reveals a place that might as well be stuffed with mummies. Senators from opposite parties avoid eye contact, even a few feet apart. The choreography is as well-plotted as an old-style Soviet party congress — everything known in advance. Senators work a three-day week, and spend about 50 percent of their free time raising money for reelection.
Filibusters, once rare, are now used to block the most routine procedures, ensuring minimal cross-pollination of ideas. The obstructionism and crankiness are laughable. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, while vowing not to leave the chamber as a procedural move to hold up unemployment benefits for millions, complained about the personal hardship he suffered for his parliamentary stunt — missing a college basketball game on TV.
“Free smoothies for crazy people in the lobby,” was Jon Stewart’s suggestion to get Bunning out of the chambers, not an unreasonable idea for this gilded nursing home of people muttering into C-Span cameras.
“When I’m in the chair,” Packer quotes freshman Sen. Michael Bennet on his rotation as the presiding officer, “I sit there thinking: I wonder what they’re doing in China right now.”
Little has changed since Mark Twain offered this assessment: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
This year Republicans are likely to pick up five to eight seats, making the Senate an even more ossified and stalemated place. If you read deep into the polls, you find the public is upset not because one party or the other is power. But because the peoples’ business does not get done.
I’ve always enjoyed Question Time in the British House of Commons, a lightning round of occasional wit and sharp interrogatories that exposes both dim bulbs and razor-sharp minds. John McCain, back when he had ideas, even suggested something similar for this side of the pond.
Absent any structural change, what the Senate badly needs is a jolt of humor, a clown to shame fellow members of the circus. More ridicule, more mirth under the spotlight to fight a mildewed sense of entitlement, could have the ironic effect of forcing senators to act like adults.