Fools on the Hill

August 1, 2024
An up-close look at the "clown show" of right-wing extremists who continue to fail to govern in Congress.Washington Post columnist Milbank, a veteran Capitol Hill observer and author ofThe Deconstructionists andO Is for Obama, resolved to limit his journalistic focus to the House of Representatives. His weekly essays from 2023 to early 2024 form the basis of this collection, enhanced by additional reporting, analysis, and context. The author presents the chaos, incompetence, and self-created crises in the House in three parts: Disinformation, Dysfunction, and Disunion. He explains how GOP gerrymandering created House seats from uncompetitive districts, enabling the "craziest SOBs" to hold the balance of power. Anyone following the past two years of national news will remember the lowlights: Kevin McCarthy's path to the Speakership over 15 ballots and capitulation to the "fringiest elements of the right wing"; the near-default on the federal debt, "playing chicken with the American economy"; threats of government shutdown; the only speaker ousted in U.S. history; and the resulting three-week "free-for-all" search for a new speaker. Election denier Mike Johnson has created his own record of failure and dysfunction, killing a bipartisan border deal and endangering U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel. Much else from this dismal era of congressional misrule will be familiar to citizens who have been paying attention: national leaders legitimizing white nationalism and demonizing immigrants, or the obsessive impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden without "a shred of evidence." Milbank brings useful detail and nuance to his portrait of this broken political system. For example, we learn that Matt Gaetz left a draft of his "Motion to Vacate" the Speaker on a changing table in a Capitol restroom and that Marjorie Taylor Greene thought "indictable crimes" was pronounced "indicktable." Clear revelations about how abuse of congressional power and political dysfunction have never been so egregious.

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August 5, 2024
A Republican majority dominated by MAGA zealots has made the House of Representatives a cesspool of “incompetence,” “chaos,” savage infighting, and racism, according to this jaundiced history of the 118th Congress. Washington Post columnist Milbank (The Destructionists) calls the current House session “the most ineffective... in nearly a century,” with no significant legislative accomplishments but plenty of pernicious right-wing distractions. These include vicious battles over the House speakership that forced speakers Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson to bend to the far-right’s demands, which brought the government close to defaulting on the national debt; a fixation on “culture war” issues like transgender athletes in women’s sports; efforts to impeach President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas despite there being no crimes to charge them with; and endless investigations of trumped-up controversies from Hunter Biden’s laptop to allegations that the Pentagon is covering up the presence of extraterrestrials. Milbank paints a lurid group portrait of congressional Republicans as a menagerie of liars and reprobates (New York congressman George Santos is the champion here) and ably skewers the party’s crazy rhetoric, feckless wrangling, and sheer tawdriness. More invective than analysis, this recap of conservative absurdities and outrages will galvanize Milbank’s liberal readership.