According to opinion polls, Congress is one of the least esteemed institutions in American life. While that should come as a shock, today it’s taken for granted. What can’t be taken for granted is the health of representative democracy amid this corrosive—and often unwarranted—distrust of its central institution.
Several years ago, I was watching the evening news on television when the anchorman announced the death of Wilbur Mills, the legendary former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. There was a lot the newscaster could have said. He might have recounted the central role Mills had played in creating Medicare. Or he might have talked about Mills’s hand in shaping the Social Security system and in drafting the tax code. But he did not. Instead, he recalled how Mills’s career collapsed after he was found early one morning with an Argentine stripper named Fanne Foxe. And then the anchorman moved on to the next story.
One of the perks of being chairman of an influential committee in Congress, as I was at the time, is that you can pick up the telephone and get through to a TV news anchor. Which I did. I chided the fellow for summing up Mills’s career with a scandal. And much to my surprise, he apologized.