By Kathleen Parker
The House censure of Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for his rude – and loud – antics during President Donald Trump’s address to Congress seems appropriate, unless you know a little history.
As viewers witnessed during Tuesday’s joint session, Democrats showed little respect for the president as he ambled through a nearly 100-minute review of his first six weeks in office. Sitting out applause lines and standing ovations, even for a child cancer victim, was one ploy. Some Democrats demonstrated their disapproval by leaving the chamber during the speech. Others held signs, which was a relatively respectful way to “voice” objections. And some Democratic women dressed in pink to say something about how poorly Republicans treat women. I don’t think it worked.
Green went well beyond his party’s carefully laid plans, shaking his cane and railing against Trump when the president claimed to have a mandate. When Green ignored repeated requests to sit down, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) ordered the congressman removed from the chamber. Green was officially shamed Thursday after the censure was approved, whereupon the House chamber erupted with shouts and songs. No kidding.
As Green stood in the well for his punishment, he and other Democrats broke into “We shall overcome.” Come on, folks. A censure by one’s peers isn’t exactly crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The man was guilty of breaching “proper conduct.” Ten Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the rebuke.
Others have escaped censure for inarguably worse behavior. When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) shouted, “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during a similar address to Congress in 2009, the congressman received only a reprimand, which is basically a slap on the wrist. Wilson was reacting to Obama’s true statement that undocumented immigrants wouldn’t be covered under the Affordable Care Act.
In my book of manners, an old Texan shaking his cane and rambling, to my ear, incoherently is far less egregious than calling the president a liar in the middle of an address. One was kind of pitiful; the other a verbal challenge that in another day might have led to a duel. As every “Hamilton” fan knows, duels are a gentlemen’s sport and generally executed with more dignity than we’ve witnessed on Capitol Hill in recent years.
It’s easy to blame Trump for the disintegration of public decorum – and though he has elevated boorishness to street-theater spectacle, he’s hardly a trailblazer. Wilson hails from a state where politics has always been a blood sport, and canes have been known to land on official heads. In 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks, a South Carolina Democrat, entered the Senate chamber, where Sen. Charles Sumner, an antislavery Republican of Massachusetts, was bent over his desk working on a speech. Without notice, Brooks approached Sumner and beat him unconscious and bloody with a metal-tipped cane.
Brooks apparently was defending the honor of one of his South Carolina kinsmen, Democratic Sen. Andrew Butler, whom Sumner had mocked. Three days earlier, Sumner had said Butler had taken “a mistress … who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight – I mean,” he added, “the harlot, Slavery.” Even though Sumner was seriously injured, Butler survived a censure resolution.
So, perhaps we can say that we’re better, not worse, than our predecessors. Given which, was Green’s punishment commensurate with his crime? He was unruly, yes, but he didn’t accuse Trump of lying, which would not, in fact, have been incorrect. He didn’t cane anyone over the head. Green was gentlemanly in accepting his “punishment,” saying afterward that sometimes it is better to stand alone than to sit silently. In a social media post Thursday, however, he claimed he was being punished for “standing up to President Trump” – which is only half true.
As for the rest of his crew, Democrats did themselves no favors by sitting glumly and expressionless, even during several opportunities to show their humanity if not respect for the president. Yes, the guests of Republicans were props invited to showcase Trump’s better nature or his agenda – the child with cancer who was made an honorary member of the Secret Service; the mother and sister of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student murdered by an undocumented immigrant; a 15-year-old student whose classmate used artificial intelligence to create pornographic images of her and posted them to Snapchat. You get the picture.
Democrats, who brought some of their own human props, couldn’t bring themselves to applaud these individuals? Poor form. Republicans haven’t behaved much better when Democrats have been in charge, which is to say, we’ve got a long way to go before decorum is recognized as a value to which we all should aspire. As the lovely Letitia Baldrige, a former social secretary to first lady Jackie Kennedy, once told me: “Manners are nothing but consideration for others.”
Our country – and especially our elected officials – could use a refresher course.
Kathleen Parker writes a column on politics and culture. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2010.
