Why are there so many buffoons in Congress?
I realize this is a question that Americans have been asking ever since the first members of that august body were sworn in back in 1789. Or perhaps earlier. In the Broadway musical “1776,” John Adams’ character gets a laugh when he declares: “In my many years, I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a Congress.” Adams himself never said those words — they were the invention of playwright Peter Stone — but it’s a good laugh line that draws guffaws from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Still, is it just my imagination, or do we have an increasing number of people in Congress who seem, to use the vernacular, just plain crazy?
An important caution: That description doesn’t apply to all members of Congress. We have some who are serious-minded lawmakers. I know because we have some here in Virginia, from both parties. That doesn’t mean they’re right on the issues — that’s often a matter of political taste — but they are undoubtedly serious-minded people. They’re also not the ones who are regularly setting Twitter/X aflame or shouting at one another on some cable news television show.
Still, there seems a wide gulf between how many members of Congress conduct themselves and how our state legislators in the General Assembly conduct themselves. I am often struck by the difference between the performative nature of many in Washington and the decidedly businesslike approach I see from legislators in Richmond. That’s not to say that there aren’t occasionally a few drama queens or kings in the General Assembly, but they’re usually ignored even by their own parties — and they’re certainly not elevated to the level of celebrities.
Why is this?
Adam Kinzinger says he knows why.
Kinzinger was one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. He later served on the so-called Jan. 6 committee that investigated what happened that day. For that, he was basically disowned by fellow Republicans. He decided not to seek reelection in his Illinois district in 2022, effectively hounded out of office by Republicans unhappy with his criticism of Trump as a wannabe dictator who belongs, as he puts it, “in leg irons,” not the White House.
Kinzinger now serves as a commentator on CNN and is off on a book tour — “Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country” — that this week brought him to Salem to speak at Roanoke College as part of that school’s Fowler Public Affairs Lecture Series.
I was offered time to talk with Kinzinger and took Roanoke College up on the offer — and that was one of the first questions I asked. Why are the Republicans I see in Washington so different from the ones I see in Richmond? They may, at some level, all share the same beliefs in terms of public policy — lower taxes, a lighter government hand on the economy, all that — but I sure don’t see Republican members of the General Assembly spouting some of the ridiculous things I see some of their counterparts in Washington do. (Let me hasten to add that there are Democrats in Congress who say ridiculous things, too, but Kinzinger calls himself “a homeless Republican” and he was more concerned about what’s happened to his own party than the other side, so that’s why our conversation focused on Republicans.)
More to the point, I’ve seen some Republican members of Congress channeling the worst aspects of Trump’s personality, but I sure don’t see that from Republicans in the General Assembly. Why? I’ve spent a lot of time lately watching the state legislature in action and what I’ve seen are legislators who may disagree, often emphatically, but they disagree in civil ways.
Some have attributed the polarization in Washington to gerrymandering and the presence of so many one-party districts where candidates don’t need to gravitate toward the center, they just need to appease their party’s most extreme elements who might challenge them in a primary. That’s certainly a factor, but isn’t a wholly satisfying answer. Virginia’s present congressional and state legislative districts aren’t gerrymandered — they were drawn jointly by Democratic and Republican mapmakers appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court — but many are effectively one-party districts simply because that’s how people live today. You can’t draw a competitive district in Republican Southwest Virginia any more than you can in Democratic parts of Northern Virginia. However, that hasn’t changed the tenor of legislators we see elected. In Florida, a 67% Republican district has produced Matt Gaetz. In Georgia, a 66% Republican district has produced Marjorie Taylor Greene. However, in Virginia, an 80% Republican state Senate district has produced Todd Pillion of Abingdon, one of the most decent people you’ll ever meet, even if you might disagree with his politics. He’s made just two Twitter/X posts this year, one about a family hike at Clinch River State Park, another to mark the session’s opening day. Gaetz and Greene are posting on Twitter/X multiple times a day.
I suspect some of that is because Pillion has a real job and Gaetz and Greene don’t. I’ve pointed out before one key difference between Richmond and Washington: The General Assembly operates on deadlines; Congress rarely does. In the General Assembly, every bill introduced gets acted on somehow, even if it’s a vote to “pass by indefinitely” in a subcommittee at 7:30 a.m. In Congress, there’s no guarantee that any bill gets voted on; whenever a member of Congress says he or she has introduced a bill, it’s really no more than a press release until somebody gives permission for it to be acted on. That leaves some members of Congress with plenty of time on their hands to fire up social media; they’re not doing serious legislating like Pillion is. He’s also a legislator of consequence on real things. Exhibit A: Helping secure funding for an inland port in Southwest Virginia. Gaetz and Greene seem more concerned with scoring rhetorical points with whomever they’re going after that day. They’re not authoring serious legislation.
Oh, there is some serious legislation that does take place in Washington, such as the bipartisan bill to make Pell Grants available to students seeking credentials at community college that I’ve written about before. However, those sponsors, both Democratic and Republican, aren’t the ones choking the airways with their fumes. In Washington, some of the most well-known members of Congress appear to be the least significant in terms of actually writing laws. In Richmond, an insignificant legislator generally gets insignificant attention.
Kinzinger explained this dichotomy. “Fundraising and fear is the mother’s milk of politics,” he told me. In Washington, the more attention a member of Congress can get, the more money he or she is likely to raise. “If you can get on Fox News and say something crazy, you get reelected,” he said. “Your local state legislators aren’t going on CNN and Fox. Your congressman is, and you can raise money by being crazy.”
That creates a hothouse effect where those members of Congress who say something crazy are rewarded; members of the state legislature who might say something crazy aren’t. On the contrary, they might get shunted aside. Pick your least favorite member of Congress, left or right, and I suspect they wouldn’t do very well if they had to spend their days doing real work in the General Assembly.
Of note: When Kinzinger says “your congressman” he’s speaking generically, not specifically. The congressman who represents Salem is Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County. Kinzinger said he didn’t know Cline well and couldn’t comment on him. He said he knew Rep. Morgan Griffith, who lives in Salem but represents the 9th District, a little better. “I worked well with him,” Kinzinger said. “He’s more libertarian than I am. He’s a more quiet and local guy” — meaning Kinzinger felt Griffith was more focused on issues related to his district than lighting up social media. Kinzinger seemed to think that was a good thing.
Kinzinger did not have such kind words for Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County. “Bob Good has been, I think, a terrible congressman,” he said. “Denver Riggleman was much better.” He noted that Good’s initial challenge to Riggleman was powered mostly by outrage that Riggleman had presided over a same-sex marriage. “That’s where we want to be?” Kinzinger asked.
Apparently so.
Now, I realize that some Republican readers may have already dropped out by now simply because they have recoiled at the mention of Kinzinger’s name — and that some Democrats have cheered him on as if he were one of their own. All those should remember this: For a long time, Kinzinger seemed a pretty predictable conservative. He was originally endorsed in 2010 by Sarah Palin. He signed on with positions pushed by Americans for Prosperity. He voted for the Republican bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. He voted for the Republican tax cut bill of 2017. He voted against Trump’s first impeachment. Then Jan. 6 happened. Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told Roanoke College students that he spent part of the afternoon barricaded in his congressional office, with a loaded gun, concerned that “I might have to go to war with my fellow citizens.” After that, he voted to impeach Trump and now sees Trump as an existential threat to American democracy. “January 6 wasn’t anything but a Trump-launched insurrection against our country,” he said.
Why did Kinzinger come to that conclusion while fellow Republicans have rallied behind Trump? He blames political cowardice and an unwillingness to stand up against the “cult” that he says has taken over his party. “My colleagues in Congress know better; going along with this is one of the most shocking, disappointing things I’ve seen,” he said. Some context: Kinzinger is not one to shrink from a fight, literally. Before he was elected to Congress, he saw a woman in Milwaukee bleeding from “a wide gash in her neck” and promptly “wrestled a knife-wielding man to the ground and disarmed him,” according to a 2006 account in an Illinois newspaper. “Kinzinger grabbed the man’s wrist, tossed him to the ground and jumped on top. Kinzinger used his knee to control the man’s hand which held the knife.” For his actions, Kinzinger was named “Hero of the Year” by the Wisconsin Red Cross and was awarded medals by both the Air Force and the National Guard in which he served.
Kinzinger says the conditions that gave rise to Trump began long ago. Political consultants are partly responsible for coming up with ever more effective — but negative — ways to motivate voters. “If you use fear to win elections, that becomes addictive,” he told me. “Nobody has been able to turn fear into a positive position.” The result of that, he says, is that “extreme voices become the mainline vision” and “we are spoon-fed this anger” that ultimately leads us to treat fellow citizens as the enemy.
Trump’s political genius, he said, is that “Donald Trump started reflecting everybody’s concerns back at them.” Now, he said, “I believe the Republican Party is a cult” — a cult built around the hero worship of a man who ought to be regarded as the antithesis of what Republicans historically have been about. “Donald Trump looks like he’s a tough guy,” Kinzinger said. “He looks like he won’t take any ‘s’ off anybody. The truth is he’s a weak, whiny victim of everything and a massive complainer.” That “violates” what used to be a basic Republican creed of self-reliance and personal responsibility, Kinzinger said. “I think it’s essential to point that out.”
While Kinzinger had lots of bad things to say about Trump, you won’t hear him say anything good about Biden. Kinzinger said he looks forward to the 2028 presidential election because we’re guaranteed to have two different candidates, and a generational change of national leaders. The challenge, he said, is making it possible for the country to get there without first suffering through an authoritarian regime that would put democracy at risk. That means “sane Republicans,” as he called them, need to unite with Democrats to back Biden, not because he’s a great president, but because right now he’s the only defense against democracy. “Four years of Joe Biden’s policies — we’ll survive those,” Kinzinger said. Four years of Trump, we might not. “I don’t care what positions people have anymore; I only care about truth and democracy,” Kinzinger said. “For the next 10 months we need an uneasy, kind of gross-feeling coalition to defend our democracy.”
Kinzinger drew a standing ovation from the crowd at Roanoke College, a mix of students and community members from the Roanoke Valley. At that moment, 731 miles north, voters in New Hampshire were delivering a decisive primary win to Trump. History will someday tell us which of those events was a footnote and which one wasn’t.
