What can we learn from Church?

Committees in Congress aren’t created as casually as picking up a Coke and a bag of chips at Casey’s. At least not until now. A new House Judiciary subcommittee will be “investigating government.” That is no small assignment. One experienced observer said, “Its mandate is whatever Jim Jordan wants to do.” It is a legislative joke.

I have never thought of Rep. Jordan, who will chair the committee, as a stand-up comic. On occasion, I have said, “He can’t be serious,” but that is not quite the same. And there was nothing funny about watching him as the favorite of the rightest-wing Republicans in blocking the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

To get Jordan’s vote and his influence with Freedom Caucus (that is like calling Arsenic Aspirin) members, McCarthy had to agree to the new committee. Here is one description; “Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and partisan firebrand Jim Jordan pushed through a party-line vote to create a House committee designed to investigate the Biden administration and defend Donald Trump.” One “responsibility’ is too general and the other too specific. Together they are an insult to House responsibility and tradition.

McCarthy has compared his Jordan investigating committee to the Church committee of the 1970s. They are not the same in how they came to be or in a defining purpose. The Church Committee was set up in true bipartisan way to investigate our government’s clearly illegal activities. It was established by a 82-4 vote in the Senate:

Chairman Frank Church, a liberal Democrat, was chairman, but a very conservative John Tower of Texas was vice chair. Among the members were Barry Goldwater and Walter Mondale.

I asked a friend who was on the Church staff for details. “We investigated the secret actions of the FBI to spy on, and undermine, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other civil rights leaders. We examined “watch lists” of law-abiding Americans whose communications were intercepted and put under surveillance because they were protesting the war in Vietnam or engaged in the struggle for human rights.” The illegal surveillance had gone on under both Democratic and Republican presidents. The Church committee, which had six Democrats and five Republicans, held over 100 hearings. It is not an empty cliché to say it sought the truth.

The Jordan committee was established on a party-line vote: 221 Republicans, — 211 Democrats. Its mission is vague. Jordan will chair the subcommittee with his usual balance. He has repeatedly said Trump should become president again. He says, and maybe believes, there was rampant abuse of power in the federal government, and particularly by law enforcement agencies investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his possession of classified records at his Mar-a-Lago residence. His vision of our country is one with less Social Security and even less health insurance.

Kevin McCarthy may not be a replica of Joe McCarthy. Jim Jordan may well be. Responsible Republicans, including in Iowa, must speak out. Reclaim your party.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.

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