One Cheer for Heckling

Can an already degraded event be diminished?

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene gives a thumbs down during President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.)

If you follow politics and want to challenge yourself, try finding something praiseworthy to say about the dismal yearly pageant known as the State of the Union.

Everyone hates it. Kevin Williamson wrote on Tuesday about how much he hates it. Jonah Goldberg has complained many times over the years about how much he hates it. At my old haunt I was known to fire off understated posts on the topic with titles like, “Please, Mr. President: Make America great again by ending the garbage event known as the State of the Union.”

Everyone hates it, but it’ll never be canceled, certainly not by Joe Biden. No president will easily forfeit the chance to speak unopposed at length to tens of millions of American voters, least of all one who’ll (probably) be on the ballot next year. And for Biden, who spent centuries in the Senate, addressing a congressional chamber is his happy place. Observers across the political spectrum marveled last night at how energized he seemed by the setting; reportedly he lingered in the Capitol for more than hour afterward to schmooze with members of Congress.

When the biggest threat to your reelection is public suspicion that you might keel over at any moment, a televised production proving that you can still deliver a long speech late into the evening with satisfactory focus is, frankly, an opportunity that can’t be missed.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Barry Alexander

    As always, I did not watch SOTU, so when I clicked through to see what Sinema was wearing, I thought for a moment that I might go blind.

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  2. RGS

    We give entirely too much respect to our presidents, who in the end are just elected officials. As I understand it, the Founding Fathers thought that power would be centered in Congress, not the Presidency. They wanted anything other than a quasi-monarch.

    It's almost blasphemy to say so, but in a way having George Washington as our first president was unfortunate. The Founding Fathers left the Presidency relatively undefined, partly (I think) because they assumed he would be our first president, and would conduct himself with the extraordinary dignity for which he was justly known. The Imperial Presidency that we now have has other origins, of course, but it has something of that initial aura and respect.

    It's interesting that, in the end, we would up with a system where the top guy or gal is treated with much traditional monarchial respect, and in the UK with an actual monarch the PM is routinely heckled in Parliament.

    BTW, forgive me, can't helping putting in a plug for Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which I recently finished. The Revolution's greatest and uniqueness are powerfully revealed, and the book is extraordinarily insightful about the search and meaning of equality, around which our politics are still based..

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      Ben Connelly

      Did you read Kevin’s article from Tuesday?

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  3. MaryB

    I read the linked article by John Podhoretz. A single tear fell from my eye; I felt so bad that he was embarrassed and disgusted by his fellow Republicans' behavior. I couldn't help but wonder if he was just as disgusted by their behavior, or more precisely, lack of behavior, during Donald Trump's presidency. I will make the effort to google him and read some of his other articles before I form an opinion about that.

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    1. Christopher Lake

      Mary, why did you not simply make the effort to Google John Podhoretz, and his view of MAGA Trumpism, before writing this somewhat snarky comment about him? John has been a vocal opponent, on the right, of Trump and MAGA populism for several years. John's conservatism bears very little resemblance to the juvenile "populist performance art" direction in which Trump has taken the Republican Party. John's father, Norman, unfortunately, came to defend, and even admire, Trump, increasingly, from 2016 on, but John did not follow his father's trajectory on that point.

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      1. MaryB

        Fair point, Christopher, my comment was snarky, something for which I have expressed annoyance when others do it. You are right to call me on it. I snarked instead of doing the work of looking into it.

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        1. Christopher Lake

          Thank you so much for your gracious, gentle, and humble reply, Mary.

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      Manleys

      " I couldn't help but wonder if he was just as disgusted by their behavior, or more precisely, lack of behavior, during Donald Trump's presidency."

      I assure you he was (although I confess that I don't know what point you were trying to make.)

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    3. Russell J

      Listen to the Commentary Magazine podcast. Wednesday might have been the day the article was discussed.

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  4. John

    Many of these republicans are not people I would want to slap on the back and have a beer with. I wonder if indictments of trump and his gang that are coming will have an influence on this ignorant and un-American behavior?

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  5. Wdbadger

    "I like when the public gets to see Republicans for who they are. A fraction of a cheer for truth in advertising."

    That's an overstatement. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not who Republicans are. Nor is Paul Gosar nor some of the other performance artists. It's certainly true that the GOP has too many of these types, but they are a distinct minority, and they were elected ... and re-elected ... and (in Gosar's case) re-elected again.

    For whatever reason, their constituents want Greene, et al. to represent them in Washington. We might hope that they would carry out this responsibility with more dignity, but their constituents evidently enjoy the show.

    Catoggio errs in portraying Greene as a representative of the Republican party. She is nothing of the sort. Her behavior and many of her views are at the party's fringe. She represents a district where such views and behavior are popular. There are very few congressional districts where she could win election.

    We may lament that Greene won with 75% of the vote in 2020 and 66% in 2022. I suppose the House GOP could punish her voters by denying her committee slots. The Ds tried that, come to think of it, and she won re-election.

    Greene, et al. defied the express wishes of their GOP leadership and embarrassed a couple hundred of their colleagues. They cannot fairly be described as examples of who Republicans are.

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      KLeeC

      MTG might be a minority in terms of heckling, but it's hard to believe the GOP isn't now a party of non-conservative clowns who don't respect truth, when the party defends them all, and they run CPAC, NRC, and represent us on college campuses.

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    2. Rblik

      Marge is the favorite to be Trump's VP pick. She's about as "fringe" as Trump himself, which sadly is pretty standard for what GOP primary voters want..... a performative vulgar sociopath who spews conspiracies.

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    3. Daniel.Rabiner

      If she wasn't such a large fund raiser from small donors I think you could make that case. But there's a large segment of Republicans who like her baffoonery.

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      1. Wdbadger

        She has a platform only because she's been elected to represent a congressional district. She's one of a handful of unserious Republican politicians who serve in the U.S. House. Over 200 of her GOP colleagues eschewed such antics. The Speaker specifically instructed Greene and the others not to engage in this behavior. To take her, Gosar and a few others as representatives of the broader party is akin to saying that the "Defund the Police" devotees who heckled President Trump as representatives of the Democratic party.

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        1. BPhillips

          Yet she was rewarded with committee assignments...

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          1. Wdbadger

            Members aren't rewarded with committee assignments. They're entitled to serve on committees, though not every committee they request. Party leaders negotiate ratios and each leader gets to fill the slots for his party. Last Congress instituted the practice of the majority Party removing minority members based on offensive speech. Sadly, the Rs continued thus practice, although they only removed Ilhan from one committee without blocking her from serving on others. The practice is nonetheless regrettable.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Bandanabooks

    Am I mistaken in remembering Republican talking points about changing Soc Sec. Did not Paul Ryan refer to this for his entire time in Congress? Given that only a few have openly called for doing away with SS, the inference was always there.

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      Manleys

      That was in the old days. The Republicans don't have the guts to do the right thing anymore.

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    2. MaryB

      You are not mistaken, Bandana.. Pretty disingenuous of both Nick C. and John P. to say that Biden was slyly lying and the hecklers were somewhat justified in huffing and puffing because only Rick Scott, that outlier!, even thought of that idea.

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      1. Kittyecws

        Mike Lee, Ron Johnson were two others. I agree it would be good to make some adjustments but Scott, Lee, and Johnson went full hog.

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  7. Dougrhon

    I think it's only a matter of time before we see a modern day repeat of Preston Brooks attempting to murder Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber.

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    Paul Montagu

    Exquisitely well said, Nick. The Boeberts and Greenes of the party have no incentive to be less obnoxious or less stupid.

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  9. Betsybowditch

    "One cheer for the hecklers!"

    Heckling is not a matter of free speech. There are rules for speaking in the House. Nancy Pelosi didn't violate them by ripping up Trump's speech but her purpose was the same as drunken soccer mom Marjorie Taylor Green's repeated heckling, e.g., to demonstrate disrespect for the president.

    When Taiwan became a democracy it was common for male politicians to engage in physical altercations on the legislative floor. This was more performance art than actual brawling but there were calls for decorum like in the American Congress.

    Now we are no longer their model.

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      Kevin M. James

      To the contrary, few things are *more* a matter of free speech than expressing vigorous political disagreement by heckling an elected official.

      But as with any other free-speech question, reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions can and should apply.

      (Personally, I’d prefer a world where the House chamber sounded more like a contentious Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons more often, so the restrictions I’d propose would be pretty darned loose…but reasonable people will differ on that.)

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      1. Betsybowditch

        At various times, serving in public office has been compared to a regular job. At a 2015 debate Jeb Bush, still referred to as governor though he had been out office for almost a decade, chastised fellow Floridian and rival Marco Rubio for not showing up for work because he was campaigning for the presidency:

        “The Senate, what is it like a French work week? You get, like, three days where you have to show up? You can campaign or just resign and let someone else take the job. There are a lot of people living paycheck-to-paycheck in Florida and they are looking for a senator who is willing to fight for them.”

        In what regular job would heckling not get a person fired?

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    Mattjabour

    'What riled up McCarthy’s caucus last night was Biden alleging that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.” That’s technically true, if by “some Republicans” you mean “Rick Scott and no one else.” '
    ...and also Mike Lee, who you posted video evidence of saying the very same thing a few paragraphs later. Kinda sketchy, Nick.

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      Normb1442

      A Federal judges in Texas has ruled that any federal law which involves spending has to be renewed periodically by Congress or it's unconstitutional. The issue in court was the CFPB but the logic could easily be applied to SocSec, Medicare, whatever. Guess who appointed her.

      Biden's rope-a-dope move last night has saved SocSec and Medicare for this year but as the Spanish used to say, "night and the Jesuits always return."

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    2. Hikingguy

      Ron Johnson. Be current. It's adorable how you want to make it as if Sen Rick Scott is a nobody. "Sketchy" is Republicans trying to convince me I never heard what I did indeed hear.

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