Congress descends into comedy and chaos — but America's not laughing

The next time you get a chance to talk to a member of Congress, ask them who they think their peers are. If they answer "my constituents," you may have found someone worthy of a conversation.

If they answer anything else, then you end up with the dark-comic circus we see today on Capitol Hill. At any given moment, I half-expect to see some lesser-known member to come running down the hall with their suit (if they wear one) in bloody tatters, hair on fire, shoes covered in mud and a look of extreme horror on their sweaty, bulbous face. Keeping pace behind them, of course, will be a senior member in the same state of disarray, but brandishing a machete. Or, if the member you encounter is Kevin McCarthy, his hair is on fire and a junior member of his delegation is chasing him down with a chainsaw.

At any rate, walking into the White House this week was calm by comparison. It is almost, and this is a word that the Biden administration loves, "boring." Yes. Normal. Dull. Boring. The Biden administration wants to put you to sleep when it comes to any controversy, and in so doing often puts people to sleep when talking about its own accomplishments. And the president's team wonders why no one knows what they do.

Congress has no such pretense. It's all crazy all the time. Ousting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy because he went across the aisle to keep the government running is the worst kind of crazy. In essence, the Republicans ousted him for doing his job. I'm honestly not saying that giving McCarthy the boot was wrong. But if they wanted to ditch him for anything, he had nine months of cataclysmic travesties behind him, any one of which could have brought about his downfall. As it turns out, if McCarthy had been totally incompetent, the Republicans would have been fine with that. They never would have kicked him to the curb. Only after he actually did his job correctly — that one time — did they pull the trigger. I guess the lesson is that if you want to lead the GOP, you have to be 100 percent incompetent 100 percent of the time. Got it.

On the upside, McCarthy showed that true bipartisanship is possible: Democrats and Republicans both hate him.

That's the tragedy and comedy all rolled up into one little ball. And that's the nub of it. As a member of Congress told me Wednesday, "This would be funny, if it weren't so serious."

It certainly is fodder for endless "Saturday Night Live" skits and commentary from a lot of standup comics. The funny thing is, in the venn diagram that includes comics and MAGA members of Congress there is a shared common skill. They do not share it exclusively. 

Or at least I don't think so. What is it, you ask, that they share? That would be the ability to regurgitate a great depth of rehearsed or memorized material when triggered by a specific phrase.

The standup comic can look at a few words scribbled on a piece of paper and instantly remember a five-minute bit, complete with gestures, reaction times, pacing of the jokes, facial expressions, a body pivot at the right moment and every single word of the bit.

A loyal MAGA member of Congress can do the same. The slogan MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN printed on a red baseball cap can trigger a cascade of learned behavior that ends with ousting the same speaker of the House it took 15 ballots to elect in the first place. 

But that's where the similarities end. The comic makes you laugh intentionally. A MAGA member of Congress can make you laugh or cry, or both at the same time, although often neither is intentional. 

The comic trains their mind to adapt quickly to what is said or done, always in quest of a better punchline. A MAGA member has no such ability. They are driven by hubris and ignorance. That's not my opinion. It is a statement of fact.

The House is full of bad comedy this week and the GOP congressmen look like a gaggle of wannabe comics on open-mic night at Flappers in Burbank. They are insecure, defensive, arrogant, overconfident and deeply ineffective. Rarely are they funny.

Matters little. Alea iacta est.

The GOP has cast out Kevin McCarthy. He's a loser to his followers, and a follower to those who call him a loser. He's also a liar, if you ask members of Congress, because he wouldn't keep the deals he made. The fact that he has no desire to run for the speakership again isn't unforeseen. The fact that everyone else with a recognizable name in the GOP is lining up to take his place also isn't unforeseen. Then there's the outlandish scenario in which Donald Trump becomes House speaker — definitely cause for alarm, as well as an endless tirade of jokes. Guess what? That's not unforeseen either.

Peter Doocy of Fox News asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the briefing room Wednesday whether folks in the West Wing are "loving" the dysfunction in Congress, and the fact that the GOP cannot control the one branch of government where it holds a majority. "No one is loving it," Jean-Pierre said, while making clear she blamed the GOP for the problem. "This is their chaos and they need to figure it out," she explained. 

But the White House has a role to play in this clown show. If nothing else, it needs to continue to show a counterpoint to the insanity on the Hill. Thus the Biden "silent but steady" tack through rough waters. That approach doesn't always work — Biden's team has communication problems of its own. Ukraine and border security recently popped up as reasons for Republicans to be angry with the budget process. Biden reacted by telling reporters Wednesday in a pool spray that he would deliver a "major" speech about funding for Ukraine and "why it's critically important for the United States and our allies that we keep our commitment."

That came after Biden said on many previous occasions that he was confident Congress would continue to support the Ukraine war effort. Something went wrong with the messaging there. Did the president miscalculate? Did someone on his staff?

Biden is "reactive, not proactive," a Democratic member of the House told me on background, and that can be "problematic." I guess that's a roundabout way of saying, yes, the president or his staff may have miscalculated.

Biden recently stood on a picket line with striking members of the UAW. That was impressive. It was both reactive and effective. He got along great with the people at the event. He usually does. But what are the chances he'll use those people skills and invite a few members of the GOP leadership over to Pennsylvania Avenue to talk about the budget? When will we see that?

Our government seems hopelessly broken, and the Republicans should own that. But the Democrats are players in government too, and all the players bear some responsibility — though some have more to answer for than others. Paying the military, keeping airports open and providing security for our nation are too important to risk a government shutdown because a minority of congressmen didn't get their way about draconian cuts that 70 percent of Americans don't support.

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Maybe Congress needs an intervention — or maybe a standup comic should be speaker of the House. Personally, I'd favor Jon Stewart among those who are with us today; if Richard Pryor were alive, he'd get my first vote. Pryor was raw to the bone, and as real as it can get. Either way, a good comic would be a far more effective speaker than anyone we've had in Congress since the days of Tip O'Neill.

That being said, I've noticed a trend, even among the best comics: Sometimes they have to explain that a comedy venue is a safe place to laugh. They'll tell us (without a single "amen"): We may fight with each other outside those doors, but inside we're all free to laugh.

Today we have to openly be given permission to laugh at ourselves and others. We're bitter. We're tense — and many of us badly need a good laugh. Maybe if Congress were run by a serious comic rather than a milquetoast politician, we might do better. We couldn't do worse. 

We desperately need an intentional laugh — not the nervous giggles and horrified guffaws we emit while the GOP tears apart what remains of our government. If you've watched Congress fumbling the budget or watched the clown show of Jim Jordan's impeachment inquiry or seen some notorious Republicans caught doing things that would normally get them arrested or banned from a PTA meeting, then you know how desperately this country needs a real laugh.

But at the moment, politics only brings a punch in the mouth. Most members of Congress don't see their constituents as peers. They see them as fans. Those politicians are not public servants. They are public embarrassments.

Most comics are far better than that — and better than most reporters covering the White House and Congress. That number includes some brilliant and capable people. It also includes a large number of propagandists who regurgitate standard-issue bile, never change directions and don't react well to audience feedback.

There are reporters who consider Trump a statesman, or at least talk about him as if he were one, ignoring the obvious evidence to the contrary. Those seem to vanish in a reporting haze. Those kinds of reporters don't exactly wear themselves out trying to report the news; they have settled for a small, obsequious role in the lives of our elected officials — at most, a minor nuisance.

Sigh. Members of Congress are at best our peers. Not our leaders. Most of them couldn't lead a lunch line of kids to the school bathrooms.

Most standup comics I know would be better peers in Congress because they actually listen. They understand how to deal with diverse audiences, they can talk about serious issues that bring people together and they crack better jokes than any politician I've ever known.

So, who do we like, if not Jon Stewart? Bill Burr for speaker? Hal Sparks? Who? Randy Rainbow? John Fugelsang? Wanda Sykes? Kate McKinnon? Tina Fey? Pee-wee Herman would have been fun. 

I'm joking. I think.