Time and place - the coming-of-age story of Rep. Joe Wilson in today's world

It’s a coming-of-age story, you see. It’s about a representative who has come of age from the voting booths of a town to accept the responsibilities of performing rousing debates on the floors of Congress with the interest of a constituency in mind while adhering to house rules. Don't fear, I’m not describing a remake of the “Cider House Rules” replacing the doctor with a Congressional representative. No, I’m describing the latest shock-and-awe disorderly behavior by a representative of a member of the 111th Congress. Enter Joe Wilson, a Congressional representative from South Carolina. In the aftermath of inappropriate timing, will the enforcement of ethical standards be abdicated in the US while many see that taking precautions in keeping the public trust in Congress is still the responsibility of everyone sitting in that room?

Here’s a reminder:

The U.S. Constitution expressly authorizes each house of the US Congress to “punish” its own Members for misconduct. Article I, Section 5, clause 2, of the Constitution states:

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

And some Congressional history:

According to the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, internal ethics enforcement in Congress was not established until 1964 in the Senate and 1967 in the House. At that point standing committees on ethics were established to which complains of misconduct and resolutions for disciplinary actions would be referred. The House adopted H. Res. 418, 90th Congress, on April 13, 1967 and created the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Members of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct make disciplinary recommendations. Still, they’ve been rare. The House has censured 22 Members (21 representatives and 1 delegate) and reprimanded 7 others. The House has expelled only four of its Members. Three of them were during the Civil War for disloyalty. One was in 1980 based on bribery. The House recognizes that discipline cannot be left entirely to the public through the electoral process since the Congress has a vital interest in self-preservation, which includes maintaining its integrity.

In Canada:

The debate on heckling has been an active one in Canada recently. In May, Adam Chapnick’s article “Unparliamentary Behavior” shed some light on Canada’s Federal Speaker of the House Peter Milliken’s decision to cut off three government MPs for making personal attacks on a leader of the opposition. One prime minister that Chapnick highlights whose name is not mentioned voiced that Parliament needed to shed its image as a stage for “contrived indignation and cheap shots and phony questions and unserious answers.” He also mentioned others who find it par for the course. 

I’d say politics isn’t a sport. It’s a means toward finding solutions to societal problems.

Chapnick essentially calls for an improvement in political behavior and notes the effect of allowing for disorderly conduct is a declining standard and a collective problem shared by all.

In Serbia, the Parliament’s rules of procedure, Article 103 states:

A speaker may speak only about the issue that is on the agenda.
No one may interrupt the speaker nor warn him/her except the Chairperson of the National Assembly in cases envisaged by the present Rules of Procedure.
During the speech of a Deputy or another participant in the debate, it shall not be allowed to heckle or distract the speaker in any other manner, or to take any other action that imperils the freedom of speech.

Those are pretty specific rules of procedure.

In Israel:

Recently, as reported by Haaretz, an official from the Meretz party heckled Yuval Rabin, the son of late Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, while he met with Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. For months, Rabin and Netanyahu have been discussing the plans for a wide coalition government, even while Rabin has expressed that he will not vote for Netanyahu. During the news conference, the head of the Meretz youth wing, Ori Zachi, accusing Rabin of endorsing Netanyahu, yelled out, “"Shame on you!" Zachi then interjected. "Your father would have been ashamed of you, the entire peace camp is ashamed. You are using your name and the memory of your father to legitimize the worst government in the history of the state of Israel." He was hauled away. Rabin told Haaretz,

"Obviously it was not pleasant hearing these words.[Coming here] was not an easy decision and I knew that it would draw harsh criticism. I don't see an option for a left-wing government. Governmental instability is our Achilles heel. We need to return to a situation where he had two blocs that alternate power between them."

It was another example of an ineffective heckle that actually gave Rabin an opportunity and showed that the heckler didn’t have a solution to offer, at least one that could be used constructively.

International response to Congressional heckle

In the rest of the world, there are signs that this incident in the healthcare debate in Congress is being seen as an opportunity to show that President Obama’s political style is preferable to the bull-in-a-china-shop approach. In “Lessons in politics by cable” published in JamaicaObserver, Barbara Glouden writes,

“Obama’s performance was a lesson to politicians everywhere on how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. By next morning, the tide of public opinion had turned enough to give his supporters some comfort and hope that there could be a reduction in the ugliness of the past weeks in which the president’s opponents played on the fears of the uninformed, especially the elderly. America has prided itself on its constitutionally enshrined freedoms, with freedom of speech being among the most revered. Where that freedom has led in the health-care debate is nothing of which to be proud, however.”

In an editorial in the South Indian Vaarttha Teluga Newspaper “Indi (ia) ecency,” notes the difference between Indian legislators and US legislators and calls on Indian legislators to learn from US counterparts in maintaining decency in Parliament. It noted that in the Indian legislature, the offensive remarks would not have subsided after just two words.

The South Korean press, Dong-A Ilbo Online is carrying an editorial today that says that if the same incident happened in Korea even if a lawmaker uses abusive language, colleagues from his own party oftentimes commend him by saying “good job,” rather than resorting to censure. And if an apology is being requested, the heckler would become more critical and say that the heckled is being overly sensitive to a trivial matter. The editorial compares the level of rationality in countries with strict rules of parliament with Korea’s National Assembly. It reports that disruptions, interference, insults are standard in the National Assembly and that the lawmakers rarely follow the laws that they made. It challenges Korean lawmakers to realize that if children are watching news on the National Assembly and see irrational behavior, then what are they learning?

Importance of maintaining standards 

In the world of politics, events have attracted much public heckling, again begging the question of whether or not it is an effective tool in expressing positions on an issue. However, they demand rationality and standards, not child's play.

Of course, there’s the mixed bag approach to standards, that we’ve seen all too often, where the mixed message delivered by the rhetoric and actions of a politician is that a venemous public outcry will be delivered even though they will have to withstand the scorn of peers and loss of public trust. In the meantime, those who can pull out the rule book and reinforce ethical standards so that there is a growth in public trust might do well by enforcing ethical standards and rational debates in the interest of society. I’m sure there are a few who prefer real arguments and civil discourse, rather than contradictory heckling that is disruptive and unhelpful to the debate on the issue, and reinforce the importance of an ethical standard of conduct.

The effectiveness of a heckling outcry has even been questioned in public outbursts on heated topics, so what lack of ethical screening is missing in the mind of an elected official who has chosen to set aside reasonableness to stay on topic for a hyperbolic personal attack and name-calling?  Heckling has waned in favor of legitimate debate. Legitimate debate is welcome on an issue that contributes to the development of a sound policy and legislative decisions on a public issue that requires good representation. Why lower the level of the debate on an important reform issue? It can only stand to reason that an effective argument is not simply being contradictory and accusatory, but one that contributes to the debate and provides a set of propositions to support a premise. Even if one has an opposing view, there’s more work to be done than heckling.

But for Mr. Wilson, being in the position to have to apologize for child-like behavior in a coming-of-age story is recidivistic to the political institution itself, since dealing with conflict for those who are part of the political process who want to affect policies and legislature in the best interest of the people means using precaution and displaying conduct that is exemplary. If performing the daily duties required by a public servant isn’t providing enough attention to maverick representatives, doesn’t it make you wonder about the respect that the representative has for the people they are representing? Unless of course the representative sees that biting their lip isn’t a responsibility they need to take seriously within the context of Congressional proceedings until the chance for civil discourse arises.

While lively debate on important issues should be encouraged between lawmakers and policymakers in domestic and foreign affairs, it would be unfortunate if Congress abdicated the responsibility to right the wrong and send a clear message that civil discourse in debates among decision-makers is still something worth fighting for. And in the interest of public trust, Congressional representatives could redeem Congress by showing that they are expressing the will of the people - not getting caught up in the moment and lowering the standard to wails that pay no dividends and deflate those who are watching from homes wondering whether or not they’ll ever afford health care costs. Maybe the next outburst could be prevented by thinking of the people sitting in their homes hoping for solutions that arise from productive pragmatic debate, listening for legitimate grievances from those who have the same healthy respect for what Congress represents – not name-calling.