I should admit from the outset that I don’t watch baseball, and I have no emotional investment in any of the players who now stand accused of steroid use. In fact, in light of the House Oversight Committee’s high-profile hearing this week, featuring pitcher Roger Clemens and his principal accuser, I tend to think Congress’ time would be better served focusing on more substantive matters.
But it appears the hearing weren’t entirely a vacuous exercise in political theater. In at least a few instances, the spectacle helped demonstrate to people who don’t usually follow events on the Hill that when it comes to taking professional responsibilities seriously, congressional Republicans are a bit of a joke.
Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock, for example, wrote an item yesterday in which he conceded that he doesn’t know or care about politics. He has no party affiliation and hasn’t even voted. But Whitlock nevertheless noticed that “party politics and the dishonesty of our elected officials compromise our government’s ability to arrive at even the most simple, obvious truth.” (thanks to Zeitgeist for the tip)
Realizing that he would spend Wednesday afternoon testifying (deceitfully, in my opinion) before Congress, Clemens spent much of last week lobbying congressmen/women to hear him sympathetically. His efforts worked beautifully, as countless Republican representatives ignored glaring inconsistencies, inaccuracies and contradictions in Clemens’ story and focused their attention on proving McNamee used to lie to newspaper and magazine reporters about his training regimen. […]
Somehow, a group of mostly Republican congressmen took it upon themselves to spend the afternoon attacking McNamee’s integrity on drug dealing/needling. Grown men and women threw out every deductive cell of common sense in their brain and launched into assaults on McNamee.
Rep. Dan Burton (Republican) found it remarkable and unbelievable that McNamee could work for Clemens given the fact that McNamee stated that he didn’t fully trust Clemens. What world does Burton live in? This is the case for at least 50 percent of the American workforce…. Burton then went on to claim that the lies McNamee told newspaper and magazine reporters about Pettitte’s and Clemens’ drug use were proof that he’s now lying under oath and at the risk of perjury.
“This is really disgusting,” Burton barked at McNamee. “You’re here as a sworn witness, you’re here to tell the truth, you’re here under oath. And yet we have lie, after lie, after lie… I don’t know what to believe. I know one thing I don’t believe, and that’s you… Roger Clemens… is a titan in baseball.”
Dan Burton is either the dumbest man in Congress or the biggest Clemens fan in politics. Well, he could be both.
I’m going with both.
Slate’s Stephen Metcalf marveled at the Republicans turning the steroid issue into a partisan conflict.
Clemens is a rich and politically well-connected Texan, who upon being named in the Mitchell Report immediately received a consolatory phone call from George H.W. Bush and who was chaperoned to his pre-hearing meet-and-greet sessions with committee members by Congressman Ted Poe, a Republican from Harris County, whose major urban center is Houston. The aggressive lawyering on his behalf and the Rocket’s own high-and-hard indignation is heavy with implication: Don’t mess with Texas; Don’t mess with the Bushes. Whoever’s direct bidding it was, the Republican committee members were more than happy to grandstand about the supposedly degenerate character of Brian McNamee, even as one of the worst and most flagrant cheaters in the history of American sports sat five feet to his left.
To take one example, Rep. Christopher Shays repeatedly tried to force McNamee to accept the epithet “drug dealer,” even though, as the depositions made clear, Clemens initially acquired his own drugs, then later dispatched McNamee to procure more. Only a fool argues first principles with a fool, especially when the first principle is Christopher Shays is a fool. But Shays’ shameful performance (following on his shameful performance during the Fallujah-Blackstone hearings, the Mark Foley scandal, and the aftermath of Abu Ghraib) points up the truly sad revelation behind the Clemens-McNamee face-off: How deeply ingrained the habits of bad government have become in recent years. The conservative contempt for McNamee hides a broader contempt: Contempt for Henry Waxman and George Mitchell’s presumption that a dose of good government could go a long way in healing an otherwise brutally ill sport.
Over the course of the hearing, in which McNamee was called a liar, disgusting, and, on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever — and against his own sworn testimony — a tell-all in search of a book deal, one thing became clear: That Clemens’ defense, in its deranged righteousness, echoes to perfection the heedlessness and swagger of the Bush years, the arrogant stupidity of an administration that will no doubt pardon Roger Clemens should he ever be indicted for perjury. It says, Here in Houston, boy, we make the rules.
What I find interesting about all of this is that baseball fans apparently tuned into the hearing, and inadvertently learned what many of us have known for quite some time: when confronted with an opportunity to confront a policy issue brought to their attention, congressional Republicans tend to embarrass themselves. This was a high-profile example, but the same phenomenon exists in every hearing, in every committee, every day. Most of the time, it’s just not national news.
Post Script: Digby added an important point to all of this:
I confess that when I saw Dan Burton out there railing like his old self, like he was getting ready to go shoot a watermelon with a picture McNemee’s head on it, I was a little confused. Since when are Republicans the big softies toward people accused of drug use?
And then I realized that it’s because steroids aren’t a drug used for pleasure, which we know is a big no-no. They are drugs used solely to give users an edge that others don’t have. Of course they are protective of a big, white Texas boy using steroids to win by any means necessary. It’s a fundamental conservative value!
Or, as Jon Stewart put it, “Overgrown, baseball-obsessed, Texas man-child who cannot take responsibility for actions … Oh my God! They think [Clemens] is the president! That’s why Republicans are on his side!”