The House Puts On Its Show

Tonight, the House of Representatives January 6 Committee will go prime time in its effort to provide a compelling TV viewing experience. Why?

What is the Jan. 6 committee for? Committee members and Democratic operatives have been telling reporters what they hope to achieve with the hearings that begin Thursday evening. My Times colleagues Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater wrote an article with the headline, “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.” Democrats, they reported, are hoping to use the hearings to show midterm voters how thoroughly Republicans are to blame for what happened that day.

Those who believe the Big Lie won’t be convinced otherwise because their belief system has long since embraced the insurrection attempt of January 6 and accommodated it. Those who feel a stirring in their loins at anything that placed the blame on Trump for being Trump will harbor the not-so-secret hope that this time, this time, Trump will finally be ruined, revealed for the venal, vulgar, deceitful narcissist he is, even though the last dozen totally conclusive “this time we’ve got him” moments amounted to nothing.

But if, as David Brooks says, this is about changing the midterm narrative, then the dog and pony show is what the committee’s detractors say it is, another manipulative political ploy proffered in a desperate attempt to shift a nation’s focus away from inflation, gas prices, the stock market, and back to hating Trump because social justice.

Other reports have suggested other goals. The committee members are trying to show how much Donald Trump was involved with efforts to overturn the election, so he is forever discredited. They are expected to use witnesses like the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to show exactly what went on inside the administration that day and in the lead-up to it. One lawmaker told The Washington Post that voters have shifted their attention to issues like inflation and the pandemic, so it is key to tell a gripping story that “actually breaks through.”

There has been some new information that’s come out from the hearings, but it’s already out and, frankly, didn’t change anyone’s mind about anything. Is there anyone who doesn’t adore Trump (or hate what progressives would do to this nation) who isn’t already aware that he’s a venal, lying ignoramus? Yes, not you. Nobody cares so keep it to yourself. But for those who already believe this, is there anything the hearings could do to make you hate Trump more?

Of course this was Trump’s fault. We didn’t need a committee to tell us that before. We don’t need one now. This was Trump’s scheme to cover his failure to win re-election, which wasn’t because America wanted Biden to be president (although they did far more than Warren or Bernie), but because so many Americans despise Trump.

And yet, the House committee feels that it will somehow change things by putting on a sitcom on prime time?

No offense, but these goals are pathetic.

Using the events of Jan. 6 as campaign fodder is small-minded and likely to be ineffective. If you think you can find the magic moment that will finally discredit Donald Trump in the eyes of the electorate, you haven’t been paying attention over the last six years. Sorry, boomers, but this is not the Watergate scandal in which we need an investigation to find out who said what to whom in the Oval Office. The horrors of Jan. 6 were out in public. The shocking truth of it was what we all saw that day and what we’ve learned about the raw violence since.

OK, Brooks, it’s not Watergate. But then we didn’t know what happened at Watergate, and the hearings exposed us to the machinations in the Oval Office. The hearings happened promptly, while the nation was still trying to figure out how this could happen. And we had yet to adopt the nihilism taught in freshman history that made us not care about what evils a president and his men could do. We were still capable of being shocked. Did anything Trump do shock anyone?

But Brooks doesn’t argue that we don’t need hearings, but rather that the hearings we need won’t be the hearing we see on the tube tonight.

We don’t need a committee to simply regurgitate what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. We need a committee that will preserve democracy on Jan. 6, 2025, and Jan. 6, 2029. We need a committee to locate the weaknesses in our democratic system and society and find ways to address them.

Brooks’ vaguely sweet notions are adorable, but less than helpful. What we need won’t come from a hearing, and most assuredly not from a dog and pony show put on by a branch of government. But Brooks’ naivete aside, the hearings tonight could do serious damage to any hope of returning to normality, to the social norms and faith in institutions that have allowed us to exist for centuries despite our regular, often vehement, disagreements about what to do for the greater good.

We don’t need a regurgitation of the January 6th insurrection or Trump’s responsibility for it. Anyone not already aware isn’t going to change his mind. We need to decide whether we can find common ground or the experiment has failed. Trump is the worst. This show won’t help.