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Abigail Spanberger drops onto a chair, pulls out two drawers and pinches a stack of white cards to place them on the table between us. The burst of activity is a little exotic. We have been talking for two minutes, just the time to clarify the preface to my next inquiry: is the US Congress totally hopeless, an irresponsible and dysfunctional body of unsavory lawmakers with the talent to protect itself … but already Spanberger , 40, seems distracted. Now, she plunges both hands into her purse, searching for a writing instrument while I ask myself a simple and sheepish question for the CIA agent who became a member of Congress in the first year: she what she invested in it?
"So many thoughts are going through my mind," Spanberger said, looking at me with a grimace, patting his pen on the table. The Democrat representing the 7th District of Virginia was waiting, it seems, for this opportunity – to share his disgust with Washington, to discharge himself from laziness exercised by a two-party tribal system and to wonder if Congress could be saved of himself. . Spanberger wanted to detail his paper grievances as we talked to make sure nothing was forgotten. But now, she speaks knowingly, detailing the institutional flaws that she has observed since arriving for her freshman orientation.
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"I've replaced someone who was rather ideological and did not show any pragmatism," says Spanberger generously to Dave Brat, the Republican cartoonist whose House Freedom Caucus comrades have dubbed him "Brat." -Bart "because of his obsession with the far-off site. "So I'm going to work in a bipartisan way, I'm going to look for places where we can agree. And then I arrive here. And I realize from the first day that this is not an incentive. Literally, even at the orientation, we had different buses – there is the Republican bus and the Democrat bus. I was excited to go to [the] different dinners, all those kinds of things, this parade of events. And except one, I think, they were divided. So, even in the most fundamental aspect of relationships, there is this division. And it becomes clear that you are Assumed be divided."
"So even in the most fundamental aspect of relationships, there is this division. And it becomes clear that you are Assumed be divided."
-Representative. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)
Spanberger soon realized that the division between the parties included a means of improving division. In December 2018, a debate broke out among the incoming 64 Democrats in the House. They hoped to send a first-year letter to the Democratic leaders outlining their political priorities and their strategic vision of the government. But the content of the letter has turned out to be polarizing; Progressives scoffed at moderates for pledging to prioritize health care costs and worries about executive power investigations, while moderates squinted at semantic demands of progressives, including an ultimatum to be removed in the sand all references to bipartisanship in the letter. What began as an exercise in party unity degenerated into a clash between rival factions that were just beginning to emerge. Finally, the word bipartisan Spanberger said rolling his eyes – but a third of the new members refused to sign.
Finally, a few weeks later, Spanberger realized the true depth of his political ignorance. It was the first day of the new congress. A few hours after taking the oath, first-year student representatives voted for the first time by a recorded vote: the election of the Speaker of the House. Dozens of Democrats had promised, at different times in the previous year, not to support Nancy Pelosi's return to the presidency. Spanberger, whose area of Richmond was held by the Republicans since 1971, was one of them. But no one seemed to take her seriously. In the days following the victory of the woman elected to Congress, every conversation she had with D.C. Democrats seemed based on the assumption that she would come back to her word.
When the pro-Pelosi forces realized that Virginia's newcomer was not going to move, they invaded her. Experienced legislators have explicitly threatened Spanberger with telling him to "take advantage of their office in Anacostia" after voting against Pelosi. Freshmen warned that she was throwing away her career. His friends in the district have begun to bet on how Spanberger would vote, smart money thinking that it would eventually give in to pressure and stay in the party's good graces. Spanberger was more and more exasperated. She had arrived in Washington with a short list of legislative wishes, hoping to quickly build alliances with her new colleagues on infrastructure issues, prescription drug costs, and campaign finance reform. . Instead, apparently, every moment of the two months that elapsed between her election and her swearing in had been absorbed by lobbying activities related to the speaker's vote. "Nothing on politics. Absolutely nothing, "she says. "Just all this noise."
This January afternoon, in the House, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies, his fellow Democrats march in the opposite direction and open the way to the presidency of Pelosi. A feeling of loss of sensation invades Spanberger. This was not what she had registered for. This was not the way the most important legislature on Earth was supposed to function. It was not the behavior she expected from people who talked about changing Congress but who complied with the status quo. "You're supposed to be here, and you're supposed to be defending people's interests, and you're supposed to fight for things that interest you," says Spanberger. "How are you just doing online?"
Suddenly, as the Democrats move forward with a process of impeachment that will extinguish any glimmer of hope that might have existed for productivity at the 116th Congress, Spanberger finds himself very reluctant on the front of the stage. On Monday, she joined six like-minded first-year colleagues to write a Washington Post an opinion letter calling for an impeachment investigation – stunning the Democratic caucus and effectively forcing Pelosi's hand.
It would be the least like-minded group of MPs, legislative pacifists who worked tirelessly not to be defined by the opposition to Trump, leading Congress into a decisive confrontation.
The consequences of the impeachment procedure on a country increasingly polarized are to be guessed. But it is hard to imagine that the next confrontation will do even more harm to an institution that, legislators on both sides agree, was broken long before Donald Trump arrived in the city.
The most essential branch of the United States government collapses before our eyes. In the midst of a salable corruption, driven by instinctive partisanship and defined by intellectual dishonesty, its decay is becoming more and more apparent – and in a way, more accepted – day by day. His leadership crisis and lack of qualified staff cause long-term damage. His abdication of the basic responsibilities imposed by the Constitution is a mockery of the intention of the authors.
And the presidency is in bad shape.
Many Americans are losing sleep these days because of the turmoil surrounding the executive power, and not without reason: Donald Trump's presidency is testing the stability of the government, but also of the country itself. Even Republican lawmakers who otherwise support his policies will recognize him: his belligerent personality and his impetuous decision-making process threatens to plunge the world into chaos at any time, his erratic behavior setting an alarming precedent for the highest office in the country.
Executive power, however, is transitory in nature. The presidency is constantly changing hands between peoples and parties. Whether he is removed by the House and removed by the Senate, expelled by voters in 2020 or re-elected for another four-year term, Trump comes and goes with a relative ephemeral – after always changing his impressions on the desk leaving bruises on the political body, but leaving all the same.
No such insurance is included in the legislature. Congress is more an institution than an office, governed as much by unwritten traditions and norms as by formal rules. In the case of the modern Congress, these standards, after being slowly and stubbornly integrated over several decades, are more than destructive. They are debilitating.
It has been more than 10 years since the approval of the work of Congress exceeded 30%, according to Gallup. Over the past five years, this number has declined among adolescents. And for good reason: despite productivity statistics – fewer bills passed, fewer laws passed, more laws designating post offices or something also meaningless – Americans have retreated before the US. foolish partisanship (closure of the government), the vagueness between deadlines – imposed emergencies (confrontations with the ceiling of the debt), unfulfilled promises (abrogate Obamacare).
Congress has not become a national strength line for any reason, and so its failures can not be summarized too broadly. The institution is divided in an apparent and ambiguous way, from the capacity of law-makers to the faulty processes that govern them. That said, it is impossible to understand the existential situation of Congress without recognizing, at a fundamental level, a fundamental structural problem: 435 districts are represented by a vote in the House of Representatives – and only a few dozen of them are challenged in November.
Even in a vague cycle like that of 2018, when the Democrats overthrew 43 GOP-held seats in a climate conducive to mass mobilization and unpredictable outcomes, nine out of ten House seats remained blocked by an occupying party. or by another. Despite two historically disruptive election cycles midway through the last decade (Republicans overturned 63 seats held by Democrats in 2010), the percentage of true constituencies is lower than it's ever been been in American history. When the vast majority of legislators know that the renewal of their work is decided not by a very diverse and ideologically diverse electorate in November, but by a primary electorate that is not homogeneous and ideologically homogeneous, you have a germ of dysfunction so contagious that It can systematically paralyze an entire system.
Which is precisely what happens in Congress. Recognizing how much this consolidation of power had divided the electoral people and reduced practically all debates to a zero-sum tribal war, most elected officials – whether they were from deep red districts or from A dark blue – act according to the fact that their career is mainly threatened, if not exclusively, by extreme elements within the base of their own party. Bipartite collaboration, whatever its value, is instinctively discouraged; Partisan Brinkmanism, even counterproductive, is encouraged and rewarded. To tell voters what they want to hear, even if it is false, unrealistic, or both, is the recipe for reelection; Tell voters what they need to hear, especially when it is aggravating or embarrassing, is a ticket for unemployment.
"In Congress," said Virginia Republican Tom Davis on the hill this summer, "bad behavior is always rewarded."
Even before addressing the myriad of other problems – poor staff retention, centralized decision-making, generational blockages – it is not difficult to understand why the legislature is struggling to function. From the moment they start their first campaigns, future members of Congress embark on a giant incentive system that deters any major challenge to the way things work in Washington. Most members will profess to scorn The Way Things Work in Washington, of course, especially when they arrive here. But it tends to develop over time – not because it works, but because it is comfortable. Where can you get a salary of $ 174,000? have a team of several dozen people at their disposal (as well as that of their family); benefit from privileged access to the information and resources of the highest levels of government; build lucrative relationships with people of immense power and influence; make taxpayer-funded getaways across the country and around the world; and attract the constant attention of local and national media in exchange for little tangible results?
Once a congressman realizes that he will never find a better job – and most of them know they will never find a better job – many will agree that compromises will be necessary to keep it.
None of this means that all members of Congress are bad people who do not know what to do. On the contrary, many of them are good people who have come here for the right reasons. And some of them are really good at their job, spending 16 hours a day delivering to their constituents. But even honorable people with honorable intentions look for themselves, their families, their careers. Members of Congress are no exception. They have wonderfully important jobs. They do not want to lose them.
Few people come to Congress to want to enforce the status quo. Every two years, Washington welcomes a new group of wide-eyed idealist lawmakers who believe – really, really – that they have been sent to get things moving in the nation's capital. They will take the difficult votes. They will resist special interests. They are going to do what is right on the part of their constituents, even if it means having the kickoff after a quarter.
Of course, this kind of idealism does not last. Once a congressman realizes that he or she will never find a better job – and most of them know they will never find a better job – many will agree that compromises are needed to keep it. They adjust. They adapt. They play the game. They convinced themselves that a foolish vote or a hurtful decision was worthwhile to maintain their career. They hang around long enough to accumulate more power, win a presidency, exert influence over certain issues, cash in and cash a revolutionary pay check from a lobbying firm, while believing that their ends were justified by their means.
"I will not miss much of this place," said Raul Labrador, a Republican from Idaho who has constantly agitated against his party's leaders, before retiring last year. "I think some people are losing their soul here. It's a place that sucks your soul. He takes everything from you. "
What remains in Congress is a staff crisis that is perpetuated by itself. The shortage of competitive districts breeds intellectual complacency and robotics partisanship; these conditions result in a regular purge of existing incumbents while making the recruitment of qualified and impartial replacements much more difficult. The good news is that the Congress still manages to attract extremely competent and problem-solving people. The bad news is that these people are disproportionately concentrated in the most vulnerable districts, especially in a wave environment when low-power voters manifest themselves for the express purpose of removing the incumbents.
All these dynamics make the Democratic wave of 2018 all the more convincing. Spanberger is part of a class of freshmen unique in its kind. Not only are members historically diverse, but an overwhelming number of them are political neophytes, having campaigned as outsiders intent on diverting Washington from the control of corporate money, politicians from the United States. career and for-profit supporters. These majority are determined to avoid the traps around Capitol Hill; they believe they have the raw numbers to succeed where so many others before them have failed to advocate a radical structural change in legislative power.
And yet, there is nothing to suggest that they will succeed. Some of these new centrist students will not survive the mid-term elections of 2020. Among those who do, many will find themselves in an air combat every two years for the rest of their political lives. Even those who prove to be the most discerning legislators and the most astute activists, those who inspire in Washington pure talent and its admirable goals, will begin to wear down. They will slowly accept that there is no congress of economics. They will re-examine whether their investment of time and energy is wasted in a job that makes them unhappy. And soon, they will leave the city, happy to find their lives but deflated to know that Congress was right of them.
"Well," says Derek Kilmerwatching Tom Graves. "It was a negative point."
It's a heavy summer morning and all three of us sit in a corner at Pete's Diner, the fatest spoon on Capitol Hill. They have just listened to the proposition that, despite their courageous efforts, Congress is doomed. It is rare for members of opposing parties to spend time together, especially with a journalist. But for Kilmer and Graves, this routine with friends is vitally important. After being singled out as two of the most beloved and effective young legislators in the city, they were given a mission this year that gives them a price and a punishment: co-direct the Special Committee on Modernization of Congress.
In this context, "modernization" is a code to put an end to haemorrhage in the legislature: dissatisfaction of members, exodus of staff members, abuse of process, breaches of transparency and accountability, assignment perpetual authority in the White House and agencies. Kilmer, a Democrat with books and books from the state of Washington, led a multi-month lobbying effort last year to convince Democratic House leaders that it was time to make the dramatic decision to form a small committee to examine the structural failures of Congress. When Pelosi acquiesced in January and appointed him president, Kilmer quickly went to work to form an alliance with Graves, an insightful and easy-going Georgian who arrived at Congress as a supporter of the spitting tea the fire but quickly lost its disillusionment with the extremists and turned it into an agreement – allied with the GOP leadership. After declining the offer to become the best Republican of the restricted committee, Graves changed his mind after meeting with Kilmer, who assured him that they would be on an equal footing on the project: no war of territory between the staffs, no unilateral leaks, no shenanigans to undermine their shared mission. He even suggested hiring the Graves press officer to handle all communications to the committee. The two men agreed that Congress was in critical condition and decided to trust each other to do something.
One year after being allowed to hold hearings, gather expert testimony and make recommendations for committee voting, Kilmer and Graves went to work to gather the easiest fruits to obtain. Their first set of recommendations in May focused on streamlining technology and improving transparency – recommendations that are worthy of note, but are equivalent to the proposal for larger guns to fight hell. I tell them so much when we sat down for breakfast a few months later. They were about to come up with a new set of recommendations to vote on, which are a bit more voluminous, to improve staff retention rates and improve the transition process for new members. Nevertheless, none of this reflected the urgency that could be expected from a committee charged with combating rapid institutional decline.
So I ask them: Can Congress to be reform? Modernized? Functional rendering again?
"Congress does not work as it should be for the American people," begins Kilmer, measuring his words. "This is not only evidenced by the results of the polls which take us less in advance than head lice and colonoscopies; it is obvious every time a legislative collapse occurs, whenever bills are drafted behind closed doors, whenever something undermines public trust in the institution. One of the reasons for the creation of this committee was the recognition of this idea and the belief that when things do not work as they should, ignoring the problem will not improve things.
"If you look back, when special special committees were created, it was always because of a crisis," adds Graves, between bites of a bagel drizzled with honey. "I think Congress has recognized that it was one of those moments."
Kilmer and Graves face two problems. The first is a cut between the leadership of both parties and their core members. In endless conversations with colleagues, in committee testimony, and in more casual contexts, it became apparent that members' core frustration was their lack of input into the legislative process. Never has the power of Congress been so concentrated in the hands of leaders; Even committee chairs, who were once giants on the hill, are often rendered useless in a system in which the party's elected leadership writes important bills, manipulates the amendments, dictates the voting schedule, and works to predetermine each after the debate.
"I left because I felt like I did not matter," Reid Ribble, a respected former GOP Congress member in Wisconsin, told a May hearing. Ribble was one of six former representatives to testify and each of them invoked the centralization of procedural authority by the leaders to justify their resignation. Sharing his work for six years on a particular bill, passing it through a bipartisan vote of the Budget Committee, but only for the leaders of his own party to refuse to present it to the House, Ribble is asked : "Why do I want to be here?"
Pelosi, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, each of the last three speakers in the House, have pledged to do something about it, restoring a "regular order" system that calls for a largely open and unrestricted process of construction and debate crushed. But in reality, the current arrangements correspond exactly to the needs of leaders to govern an increasingly ungovernable institution. With the power structure being flattened by the forces of external money and social media, policymakers still have a way of exercising control over their members – and they are not about to abandon it.
The second problem is that Kilmer and Graves have no jurisdiction over abuse of process. Although they constantly hear the call for a return to order, they can not do anything to change the rules under which a majority party heads the House. It's just not within the purview of their committee.
Again, none of the major structural problems that plague the Congress: redistricting guidelines, rules for financing election campaigns, limiting the term of office of members or committee chairs, banning the lobbying of former members. Kilmer and Graves can not force more people to vote in security primaries that tend to give marginal ideologues. They will certainly not tackle hot issues such as increasing congressional pay (too easy to demagoguarize during an election period) or the study of the mandatory retirement age so that octogenarian lawmakers do not shape the election. future of a country in which they will not live. . (Consider here the contrast between American companies, which usually require the retirement of their leaders at age 75, and a Democratic leadership in the House whose three most senior officials are all well beyond this expiry date. )
"I do not think there is a quick fix to make Congress more functional."
-Representative. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.)
By leading the select committee – the kind of committee usually endowed with immense autonomy to stand out from the traditional Congressional investigations – they do not seem in a hurry to rock the boat. This may be because they are given a promising future, both of which are themselves considered an important element of leadership. Or maybe it's because they accepted that a small, unsatisfactory and unsatisfactory change is better than no change at all. Whatever the reason, Kilmer and Graves work laudably within the narrow confines of their jurisdiction, issuing unanimous recommendations from the committee with hopes for success in the House, believing that their targeted reforms may well begin Congress also slowly new and brighter direction.
But beyond the hashtag hugs offered by leaders of both parties – a kind of congratulations to the well-educated panel members – it was well understood at Capitol Hill that this small committee will not reinvent Congress. After at least the fourth mention between them of something that "falls outside of our purview," Kilmer becomes somewhat confused. "I do not think there is a quick fix to make Congress more functional. Je pense vraiment que ce comité offre une énorme opportunité de générer de l'impact. Nous avons donc un Congrès qui fonctionne mieux pour le peuple américain », a-t-il déclaré. "Ni Tom, ni moi-même, ni aucun membre de ce comité ne participeraient à ce travail si nous pensions que c'était un exercice futile."
Je les crois. Je peux voir comment, pour deux jeunes législateurs ambitieux et frustrés, ce comité représente une avancée potentielle. Mais je peux aussi voir en quoi cela représente un point de rupture potentiel.
Les politiciens bien plus aveugles que Kilmer ou Graves ont levé la main et sont partis, convaincus que rien ne pouvait améliorer les conditions du Congrès. Graves admet que le fait d'entendre les plaintes de ses anciens collègues au cours de leurs témoignages – en particulier de celle de son ami Ribble – l'a contraint à faire face à sa propre patience. En ce qui concerne Kilmer, un législateur à l’air ensoleillé, s’il en existait un, il me dit que la première chose qu’il fait dans son vol chaque jour est d’écrire une lettre à ses jeunes enfants, expliquant pourquoi il s’en va et quelle est sa signification. du travail qu'il fait pour assurer leur avenir. Kilmer dit qu’il n’a jamais été aussi enthousiasmé par ce comité que ce n’est ce qui ressort de ces lettres. Mais cette anecdote personnelle implique implicitement que si les modestes efforts de son comité ne sont pas adoptés par un vote complet du Congrès, il ne restera peut-être plus aucun mot sur lequel écrire pour ses enfants.
Assis sous un bar à baldaquin Au crépuscule, sirotant un vieux jeu avec sa cravate desserrée, Will Hurd fait de son mieux pour être diplomate.
«Nous sommes confrontés à un certain nombre de défis qui définissent la génération. Et nous devons commencer à relever ces défis. Maintenant," Hurd, un républicain de troisième mandat du sud du Texas. Il en parle: la Chine met à l’épreuve la domination militaire et financière de l’Amérique; les progrès technologiques qui menacent de déplacer des millions de travailleurs américains dans les décennies à venir; des politiques commerciales obsolètes qui pourraient neutraliser des industries entières de la main-d'œuvre nationale; et une explosion d'intelligence artificielle qui posera des questions sans précédent en matière d'éthique, d'économie et de réglementation.
Hurd secoue la tête. «Ce ne sont pas des sujets que vous entendez et dont vous parlez à Washington, mais ce sont les sujets que nous avons traités. Nous avons affaire à un adversaire nommé China, qui a un plan sur cent ans. Nous ne pouvons même pas penser pendant un quart, sans parler de 50 ans, encore moins de 100 ans », dit-il. "Ainsi, alors que je suis fier de mon temps au Congrès, je peux avoir un impact plus important sur mon pays en dehors des salles du Congrès."
Au cours des cinq dernières années, M. Hurd a acquis la réputation d’être l’un des meilleurs législateurs de Washington – une personne définie par le professionnalisme, la compétence, le pragmatisme et la minutie. Il a passé de nombreuses lois sous les présidents et les présidents de chambre des deux partis. Il a serré la main dans tous les coins de son district, l’un des plus grands du pays, s’étendant sur plus de 800 km de la frontière américano-mexicaine. Il a tenu tête au président de son parti sur des questions de politique et de comportement personnel, expliquant à quiconque voudrait bien écouter qu'il n'était pas un membre de la Maison-Blanche, mais plutôt un représentant élu d'une branche du gouvernement co-égale.
"Quand les membres du Congrès croient que le président est leur patron", sourit Hurd, "vous avez un problème."
Et maintenant, il s'en va.
Il est difficile de quantifier, sur le plan symbolique ou sur le fond, à quel point le Congrès souffrira de la perte d’un membre comme Hurd. Ancien président de la classe à la Texas A & M University, il a été recruté par la CIA et a passé une décennie à mener des opérations d'infiltration au Moyen-Orient: «recruter des espions, voler des secrets, chasser des criminels.» Hurd excellait dans ce domaine. Tellement bon, en fait, que Robert Gates – qui a siégé à huit présidents des deux partis, avec des mandats à la tête de la CIA et du Pentagone – a cru que Hurd pourrait finir par diriger l'Agence. Mais le destin est intervenu: quand il a été invité à informer une délégation du Congrès en visite en Afghanistan, Hurd a été terrassé par le manque de connaissances élémentaires des législateurs sur les opérations américaines à l’étranger. Plusieurs membres du Congrès ne connaissaient même pas la différence entre musulmans sunnites et chiites.
Bien que je sois fier de mon temps au Congrès, je peux avoir un impact plus important sur mon pays en dehors des salles du Congrès. "
-Représentant. Will Hurd (R-TX)
Disturbed, and suddenly convinced that American taxpayers were being represented by idiots, Hurd stunned everyone at the CIA by quitting to come home and run for Congress. (After failing to persuade him otherwise, Gates wrote the first campaign donation check of his entire life, hoping that Hurd might just end up occupying the Oval Office one day.) The newcomer lost his first campaign but won two years later, flipping a brutally competitive district that has since seen tens of millions of dollars poured into it by Democrats in hopes of unseating him. Despite owning an approval rating in the district that regularly pushed 70 percent in polling by outside groups, the congressman won reelection by fewer than a thousand votes in 2018, a photo-finish thanks to a mass mobilization of the anti-Trump vote.
Hurd insists he would have won another term in 2020. But he didn’t see the point anymore. As a trained spy oriented toward action, why re-apply to a workplace where nothing gets done? As a moderate Republican, why spend every day answering for the extremism of the party and its leader? As a forward-thinking individual who wants to preempt the problems of tomorrow, why hang around a reactive institution that struggles to keep up with the problems of yesterday?
We haven’t seen the last of Hurd. A politician of his skill and initiative does not fade into obscurity. He’s going to travel the country speaking to these shortcomings in Washington. He’s going to write a book. He’s going to form a super PAC that will support diverse, results-oriented Republican candidates in primary elections. If all that sounds like the work of someone preparing to run for president one day, well, he just might do that, too. But it’s clear Hurd believes that Congress is in trouble; that only by replacing the “low-caliber” incumbents—a term he uses with a tactful grin—with real lawmakers can the institution begin to self-correct.
It’s possible that Hurd’s decision will be validated, that he will help trigger a mass turnover on Capitol Hill that sees a renaissance of young, hungry, fed-up legislators ushering in a new era of congressional leadership. But it’s also possible that Hurd’s retirement will foretell an ugly fate for those few lawmakers like him. The Texas Republican has been such a popular mentor figure to so many of the freshman Democrats that you’d think they were color-blind. Sitting at the bar in D.C., Hurd feels a tap on the shoulder from Angie Craig, a newcomer from Minnesota who playfully scolds him for retiring. Hurd responds with a joke about how Pelosi is suddenly allowing more of his bills to move toward the House floor—really, it’s not a joke—and tells Craig to keep focused on her constituents.
She walks away with a smile. But not everyone is taking the news so well.
“Dammit,” Spanberger groaned this summer when, during a swing through her Virginia district, a staffer told her of Hurd’s retirement. "Dammit. "
Despite belonging to warring parties, Spanberger and Hurd hit it off the moment they met, marveling at how much they had in common: young, irreverent, former CIA operatives who had ousted incumbents in their purple districts with promises of bipartisanship and responsible governance. Spanberger hoped to build a strong, independent brand modeled after Hurd’s. When I ask about his departure—one certain to deliver the district back to the Democratic Party next year—Spanberger barely tries to mask her disappointment.
“I respect him immensely,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe people don't want to hear that; people don't want to hear that I can disagree with him [even though] I actually really respect him immensely. I think he's driven by many of the same motivators that I'm driven by.”
Spanberger was shaken by Hurd’s decision to quit, a fact that did not escape Elissa Slotkin, the Michigan Democrat who has become Spanberger’s closest friend in the freshman class. (Slotkin was another co-author of the Washington Post op-ed that tipped the pro-impeachment scales inside the Democratic caucus.) Like Hurd and Spanberger, Slotkin is a product of the CIA who flipped a battleground district. Unlike them, Slotkin is bullish on the prospects of a good-government revolution in Congress. Not surprisingly, she believes it starts with electing the right people—better people, she makes clear, than the ones she has encountered in D.C.
“It’s very, very easy for me to come back every week and separate the wheat from the chaff, separate the people who are really here to actually help from the people who are here to be show ponies.”
—Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)
“It's very, very easy for me to come back every week and separate the wheat from the chaff, separate the people who are really here to actually help from the people who are here to be show ponies,” Slotkin says. “You could tell within six weeks of being part of this body—and I will tell you, we have the largest number of workhorses that have been around for a long time.”
She continues, “And if you look at the crop of candidates who are running in 2020, a lot of them looked at what we did in 2018. … These are interesting, substantive people. So we're now repeating the process, which is a good thing, because I think real change comes with numbers,” Slotkin says. “Our class isn’t just two or three Will Hurds. Will did not come in with this kind of class; Will came in as sort of an island. And I want this body to attract really capable Democrats and Republicans. We need really competent people on both sides of the aisle.”
Of course, the only thig harder than attracting capable lawmakers is keeping them around. Spanberger can’t help but empathize with Hurd’s decision. There is so much about Congress that infuriates her after just nine months on the job; who could blame him for leaving after six years?
Take, for instance, the wheel-spinning effort to reduce prescription drug costs. “We passed two good bills out of the subcommittees and then we put them on the floor,” Spanberger recalls, at which point her party’s leadership added divisive language related to the Affordable Care Act. “And then we're shocked when they don't pass with bipartisan support. Well, they were bipartisan coming out of committee, and we put what we knew what would be poison pills in them. Why? Is it that we don't want to give a president a win if we sign a prescription drug bill into law under [him]? I do not know. My suspicion is there’s a fair number of people who don't want to give the president a win. But that's not what it should be about.”
Or, she says, consider the disingenuous melodrama of committee hearings. “These are the two most common things you'll see,” Spanberger explains, growing animated. “Somebody will walk in, their staffer will shove paper into their hands, and they'll sit down. Elles vont Lily the question like this”—she brings a notecard close to her nose—“so, clearly reading. Reading. They've never read it before, they didn't think about it, they don't know what they're asking, they certainly don't know that a guy two questioners beforehand asked the same damn question. And so, the poor witnesses that are there, hungry and drinking tiny little bottles of water that we give them, are answering the same questions over and over. There's no follow up, there's not depth of inquiry. You either get that, or you get somebody who wants to ask a question for four and a half minutes, followed up with, "Wouldn't you agree?" They're trying to go viral.”
And then there’s the matter of attendance at said committee hearings.
“If you're in a competitive district you need to fund-raise,” she says, “and I did not realize until a couple months in that people skip hearings to go fundraise. I am not a naïve person, but I said, ‘Oh my goodness, how are you getting all this fundraising done?’” The answer she got from other members, Spanberger says, is that they like to make a show of appearing on the dais before dropping their materials, slipping away and finding a private room nearby where they can make fundraising phone calls. “I have yet to skip out on a hearing to go fundraise. Because it feels—it’s wrong,” she continues. “And people will say, ‘Well your whole job is to get re-elected.’ Why the hell am I here if I’m not actually in the here and now? When I got elected, I was given two years. Yes, I want to come back, so I need to lay the groundwork to come back. But laying the groundwork shouldn't mean not actually doing my job.”
The question remains: Given everything that she knows about Congress now, why would Spanberger vouloir to come back?
She glances down at her stack of notecards, all of them blank, and takes a long, pregnant pause.
“For my own personal purposes—if I were really just thinking, what do I find enjoyable? —I totally get where Will Hurd has gotten to,” she says. “And maybe there will come a point in time where the scales will tip, and this won't be enough for me anymore. But I was at an arts and crafts fair, and we were walking around, and they had me do the introduction. And this woman comes up and she grabs both of my hands and she tells me about her husband, who's standing right there, and his insulin cost. And we have this wonderful conversation. And she said, ‘I believe in you. I trust you. I know you’re trying to help us.’”
She pauses again. “Every frustration that I have, it's because I'm trying to help a woman like that. And as broken as this system is, if I abandon it, what's left for her?”
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