The Sack of Washington
By Celia Wexler
If we ever needed a metaphor for the rending of the national soul, yesterday’s riot provided it. The U.S. Capitol is a living, breathing, place. Built in part by slaves, it is the repository of our best instincts and some of our worst failures. It is where we honor our most distinguished dead. It is the closest building we have to a cathedral honoring democracy, a flawed and fragile idea, often subverted by prejudice, greed, and venality, but still offering hope to those who would improve it.
There have been assaults on the capitol before, but not like this. The building has never been breached by a mob of thousands of its own citizens. The fact this happened is not surprising. What protects a building like this is a shared faith in its value and promise. The capitol police have been able preserve order not because they tote submachine guns, but because people entering the building know the rules and respect them. (It seems that at least some capitol police themselves no longer share these values, if tweeted videos taken on the scene that show cops taking selfies with the rioters, and possibly even helping them get into the building can be believed.)
The windows of this building were easily broken because the U.S. is not a police state that bars its citizens from the place where the work of democracy gets done. That will change, no doubt, making the entire capitol complex increasingly less accessible, as 9/11 did, as various dicta from various leaders of the House and Senate have done over time.
It is difficult to see this structure, bruised and breached and full of angry deluded zealots, and not wonder about the future. The past seems so distant now, even quaint. I have known Capitol Hill, both as a journalist, and as a public interest lobbyist.
I know the splendor of the House Speaker’s office, with its spectacular view of the grounds, polished furniture and fresh flowers. I know the cramped basement rooms where important hearings are sometimes held, often in sites to escape public view. I know who can use the subway connecting the House and Senate office buildings to the capitol building, and who can’t and how to get around the rules when you have to.
I know what it’s like to watch legislation that you’ve mobilized millions of fellow Americans to support, that you’ve amassed facts to support, that you’ve begged members of Congress to accept, actually become law. As a lobbyist for Common Cause, I was in the chamber when the Senate approved the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Sponsors Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI) took a few of us out to a celebratory dinner at McCain’s favorite Italian restaurant.
We felt we — and more than a million Americans who had signed petitions we circulated — had done something good. We wanted to prevent secret corporate money from influencing federal elections. The law didn’t last long. By 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned its key provisions, opening the door to billion-dollar campaigns, fueled by “dark” money. But in the short time it was in effect, I’m convinced it enabled Barrack Obama to beat the odds and gain the White House.
But the Obama era seems so far away. Like an old house, democracy needs tending and maintenance. The last four years have been particularly hard, as the head of state never pretended to represent all the electorate, only the people who voted for him, and whose record for untruths was unprecedented. Every crisis became a missed opportunity to bring the country together, and instead made the cracks in democracy’s foundation — racial injustice and income inequality — far wider. Even something without an ideological agenda like wearing a mask during a pandemic became a political act. If the nation lacks a shared purpose even in fighting the coronavirus, it’s hard to see what sort of purpose will ever bring it together. Even after yesterday’s riot, 138 Republican House members and seven Senators voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
The next days and weeks will tell whether enough citizens can accept the democratic values that the U.S. Capitol stands for. I’m not at all certain that the building — or the nation — can truly be repaired.
