PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write. I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf. The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie. And it is where you want to be on a golf course.
Where were you when:
- President John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
- The twin towers in New York City came down during the horrific airplane attack?
- When insurrectionists, at the urging of President Donald Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol?
Unfortunately, it is relatively each for all of us to remember those fateful days.
Wall Street Journal writer Gerald Seib made the same point in a column earlier this week that started this way:
“One could make a plausible case that the three most traumatic days in America in the last 60 years were November 22, 1963, the day President John Kennedy was shot; September 11, 2001, the day terrorists struck New York and Washington; and January 6, 2021, the day the Capitol was attacked and democracy’s work stopped by an angry mob.”
Seib’s proposition is noteworthy in that it elevates the profile of the insurrection, comparing it to the day Kennedy was assassinated and 9/11 tragedy occurred.
Some observers, especially some Republicans, wouldn’t make that connection.
And, before I go on, I would add a fourth traumatic day – the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, though it was not within the 60 days of Seib’s proposition. I was not alive on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, but I have watched enough documentaries to understand how horrific that day was in our history – “a day of infamy.”
Further, though it would not be possible to cite a specific day, it is worth mentioning the holocaust Adolph Hitler wrought in Germany and many other parts of Europe, which featured his plan to rid the earth of human beings he hated, the Jews. To be sure, the Hitler-trauma occurred far outside the U.S., but it still resonated here – and does to this day as a time of unspeakable trauma for the world.
Back to more from Seib:
“In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks, commissions were created to investigate, though they actually pursued slightly different questions. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, the key question before the Warren Commission was: What happened? In the 9/11 aftermath, the key question for the panel created then was: How did this happen?
“In the aftermath of January 6, versions of both questions are on the table, and a commission presumably would try to get at both.”
The U.S. House has approved creating a commission, with 35 Republicans joining Democrats to back the idea. But the Republican congressional leaders, under pressure from Trump, continue to oppose the idea.
For example, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will try to stop the commission on the Senate floor this week and he may well succeed, including by using the filibuster to block action.
As Seib put it, in the cases of Kennedy assassination and 9/11 commissions, “the fear of what could happen if there wasn’t an independent inquiry came to outweigh concerns about the problems one might create. And in the end, each panel served the principal purpose for which it was created.”
As for the January 6 commission, the question persists – what will happen if there is not an independent inquiry, one created by, but separate from, Congress.
Republicans appear to fear that an independent inquiry would verify that Trump fomented the insurrection, did nothing to stop it, and, presumably, thinks it serves his interests to ascribe value to what it did.
Which, for me, stands as another reason to oppose the rise of Trump.
Perspective from the 19th Hole 