MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21T
he leaders of both parties in the
House of Representatives offered
the nation an important lesson
last week about why our politics
are broken and our national mood is so
surly.
The master class was taught inadver-
tently by Minority Leader Kevin McCar-
thy (R-Calif.) and somewhat more con-
sciously by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.). Their closing speeches on the
Build Back Better bill passed by the House
on Friday illustrates how our political
parties are not even in the same business
anymore.
The Republican enterprise is devoted
to stoking anger and social resentment,
not to enacting legislation. Democrats
may take an eternity to do it, but they
actually want to pass bills, create pro-
grams and spotlight day-to-day concerns
(child care, health care) that government
can plausibly address.
McCarthy’s 8 ½-hour rant reflected his
need to mollify the GOP’s large right wing
with a protracted, nihilistic scream of
opposition, even if “some of his claims,” as
The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor, Paul
Kane and Jacqueline Alemany wrote,
“wildly defied the facts.”
His marathon of negativity capped a
week in which just two House Republi-
cans joined Democrats in voting to cen-
sure Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) f or
tweeting an anime video that depicted
him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez (D-N.Y.).
The party’s collective refusal to draw a
line against such odiousness speaks to a
degree of extremism that is partly ob-
scured by the willingness of a small
number of Republicans, particularly in
the Senate, to work with Democrats on a
handful of issues.
The GOP now focuses on undermining
our electoral system and stoking division
across racial lines. In pursuit of these
goals, Republicans are willing to tolerate
and apologize for right-wing violence and
intimations of violence by the likes of
Gosar.
In her brief speech before the bill
finally won House approval Friday morn-
ing, Pelosi tweaked the Republican leader
for his bombast — “as a courtesy to my
colleagues, I will be brief,” she said to
applause. But her emphasis was on the
sweeping legislation’s specifics: bringing
down the costs of insulin, cutting child-
care costs “fully in half for most families,”
“universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year
old in America,” “high-quality home
health care.”
The vogue is to say that none of the
historic measures Democrats are trying to
enact (or have already in the case of roads,
transit and broadband) will be of much
help to them in next year’s elections, or do
much to lift President Biden’s poll
n umbers.
We’ll see soon enough. But it’s true that
the radically different nature of the two
parties tilts the scales heavily against a
serious, substantive debate over how and
when public action can improve lives.
If politics is defined as nothing but the
one big culture war that so many Republi-
cans embrace, the practical work of gov-
ernment becomes a mere sideshow. One
result: Any Republican willing to work
with Democrats to solve particular prob-
lems (say, collapsing bridges) becomes a
traitor in the only conflict that matters.
You can say this for McCarthy: His
actions suggest he is fully aware that the
dominance of a resentment narrative
serves the GOP’s interest.
The Pew Research Center’s latest edi-
tion of its always-enlightening typology of
the American electorate shows that mov-
ing politics away from bread-and-butter
economic concerns is the best way for
Republicans to hold their supporters
t ogether.
Two of the party’s four key coalition
groups (Pew labels them “Faith and Flag
Conservatives” and “Committed Con-
servatives”) are conservative across the
board and welcome the party’s opposition
to Democrats’ government initiatives. So
does a third group, the “Ambivalent
Right,” which though more moderate on
issues such as abortion, immigration and
same-sex marriage, is also skeptical of
larger government.
But Pew characterizes nearly a quarter
of the GOP’s supporters as the “Populist
Right,” hard-liners on immigration who
are also “highly critical of the economic
system.” If politics ever became more
about economics than culture, the party’s
hold on many in this group could become
tenuous.
But here is the most disturbing Pew
finding: “Perhaps no issue is more divisive
than racial injustice in the U.S.”
Pew found that among “the four Repub-
lican-oriented typology groups, no more
than about a quarter say a lot more needs
to be done to ensure equal rights for all
Americans regardless of their racial or
ethnic background; by comparison, no
fewer than about three-quarters of any
Democratic group say a lot more needs to
be done to achieve this goal.”
This gulf on one of the central ques-
tions facing our nation suggests that, for
now at least, Republicans have a powerful
interest in keeping a politics of resent-
ment alive. The angry divisions over Fri-
day’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case
— and the facts of the case itself — are the
latest example of why the country needs
less of this kind of politics, not more.E.J. DIONNE JR.The GOP betson resentmentover problemsolvingHelping the Justice Department re-
cover from the politicization of the
Trump years is at the top of Attorney
General Merrick Garland’s agenda.
That is why it is so puzzling that Garland’s
Justice Department has come out against a
measure — one that enjoys nearly unani-
mous, bipartisan support — that would help
restore accountability to the battered
i nstitution.
The issue involves the authority of the
department’s inspector general to investi-
gate professional misconduct by the depart-
ment’s lawyers — an authority that the
inspector general now lacks. Yes, you read
that right. Unique in the government, the
Justice Department lacks the power to probe
a significant — arguably the most significant
— part of the department’s workforce. (The
inspector general still has the FBI, Bureau of
Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration
and other department components to kick
around.)
Under a long-standing arrangement, first
enshrined in the 1988 law that created the
Justice inspector general, the job of review-
ing the conduct of the department’s lawyers
is largely left to the Office of Professional
Responsibility. It isn’t up to the job and has
long fallen short in performing it.
The department’s political appointees get
to hire and, if they want, fire the head of the
Office of Professional Responsibility; the
inspector general is confirmed by the Senate
and can be removed only by the president.
And the OPR serves, for the most part, as a
black hole of accountability. Investigations
may be launched, but the results are rarely
made public, and then often grudgingly. The
inspector general, by contrast, has a track
record of producing compelling investiga-
tions, for public review. These include, to
take just a few recent examples, the searing
takedowns of the FBI’s handling of sexual
abuse allegations against former USA Gym-
nastics physician Larry Nassar and the bu-
reau’s error-ridden Crossfire Hurricane in-
vestigation into Russia and the Trump
c ampaign.
But the inspector general operates under
unnecessary constraints that may serve the
interests of the department’s lawyers but do
not serve the public. During the Trump
administration, Inspector General Michael
Horowitz had his hands tied for months
when Attorney General William P. Barr inter-
vened to reduce career prosecutors’ sentenc-
ing recommendation for Trump ally Roger
Stone. Department officials rebuffed Horo-
witz’s bid to investigate the cushy plea deal
obtained by Jeffrey Epstein; OPR conducted
a probe that came in for wide criticism.
Amazingly enough, nearly everyone out-
side the department agrees this should
change. The Senate Judiciary Committee last
year approved a measure sponsored by Sens.
Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee
(R-Utah) by a lopsided vote of 21 to 1. (The
one was South Carolina Republican Sen.
Lindsey O. Graham.) The House unanimous-
ly approved a companion bill.
With a Democratic administration in pow-
er, Durbin, to his credit, has kept at it. There
is some prospect that the fix could be includ-
ed as part of the must-pass defense authori-
zation bill now before the Senate.
An attorney general who came to office
promising to restore “the norms that have
become part of the DNA of every Justice
Department employee since Edward Levi’s
stint as the first post-Watergate attorney
general” should welcome the kind of beefed-
up oversight that a more empowered inspec-
tor general would provide.
Instead, buried in an annual overview
released Tuesday is the department’s sum-
mary rejection of any need for change, citing
the Office of Professional Responsibility’s
decades of experience with the “complex
legal and ethical standards” that apply to
DOJ attorneys and the fact that it operates
“independent of the prosecutors whose con-
duct it reviews.” Because “OPR maintains an
effective system for investigating attorney
professional misconduct and conducts its
work independently, the Department does
not believe that additional legislation is
needed,” the report concludes.
I get it — no one likes having an inspector
general sniffing around and second-guess-
ing. But every other inspector general has
authority to investigate misconduct by law-
yers inside their department or agency; the
DOJ inspector general, and the experienced
lawyers on the IG’s staff, can surely manage
that task.
As Horowitz has noted, if an allegation of
professional misconduct is made against the
FBI director, his office investigates it. If a
similar allegation is made against the attor-
ney general, that is relegated to the Office of
Professional Responsibility, which is under
the attorney general’s control. This makes no
sense, unless your goal is protecting your
own.
Durbin, a Garland fan, opted for a re-
strained response to the news. “Merrick
Garland was confirmed on the promise of
bringing independence and accountability
to DOJ, and I hope he embraces this opportu-
nity to do so,” Durbin said in a statement
provided by his office. Me, too.
And the department, even as it says no
new law is needed, is proposing changes that
would beef up the IG’s role. Spoiler alert:
They don’t go far enough.
There’s a saying among DOJ veterans
about the new crews of attorneys general and
deputies and associates that shuttle through
every few years, even as the permanent staff
remains: If you don’t run the department, it
runs you. Garland should be running the
department on this issue, and telling it that a
new era of oversight has arrived.RUTH MARCUSWhy is thisJustice Dept.fighting moreoversight?Kyle Rittenhouse beat his
case because he put on the
best defense money can buy.
Don’t believe the hype
that Rittenhouse, who was pros-
ecuted for homicide after shooting
three people at a Black Lives Matter
protest in Kenosha, Wis., in August
2020 was acquitted because self-
defense cases are tough for prosecu-
tors to win. More than 90 percent of
people who are prosecuted for any
crime, including homicide, plead
guilty. The few who dare to go to trial
usually lose — including in murder
cases.
Rittenhouse’s $2 million legal de-
fense funds enabled his lawyers,
before his trial, to stage separate
“practice” jury trials — one in which
18-year-old Rittenhouse took the
stand and one in which he did not.
The more favorable reaction from
the pretend jurors when Ritten-
house testified informed the deci-
sion to let the teenager tell his story
to the real jurors. His apparently
well-rehearsed testimony was prob-
ably the most important factor in
the jury ultimately letting Ritten-
house walk.
All that money also allowed Rit-
tenhouse’s lawyers to retain
O.J. Simpson’s jury consultant —
and arguably her skills helped the
defense win the same “not guilty”
verdict. Now, in the eyes of the law,
Kyle Rittenhouse is just as innocent
of homicide as O.J. Simpson.
Most criminal defendants cannot
afford those kinds of resources. Rit-
tenhouse, raised in a working-class
family, could not have either but for
influential people such as former
president Donald Trump and
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) acting as
his cheerleaders.
On Monday night, Rittenhouse —in the tradition of dancing with the
one who brung you — will be inter-
viewed by Fox News host Tucker
Carlson. Regardless of whether Rit-
tenhouse wants or deserves to be, he
is now the poster child for reaction-
ary White men who seek to take the
law in their own hands, who want to
patrol Black Lives Matter protests
with assault weapons and who think
that violence is a legitimate form of
political discourse.
Some people have questioned
how this case, in which a White man
killed two White men and severely
wounded another, implicates race.
But it is impossible to imagine the
right embracing the cause of a
young Black man who brought a
semiautomatic rifle to, say, a “Stop
the Steal” rally and ended up killing
two people and blowing the arm off
another. For Rittenhouse’s support-
ers, his Whiteness is an integral part
of his appeal.
Here’s where I am supposed to say
that the issue is not that Rittenhouse
had the funds to bankroll his de-
fense but, rather, that other accused
persons should enjoy that same ben-
efit. To be sure, I do wish that each of
the 10 million-plus people arrested
in the United States every year —
most of whom are poor people of
color — actually were extended their
constitutional right to effective as-
sistance of counsel. Too many are
forced to rely on underfunded pub-
lic defenders or overburdened ap-
pointed lawyers — no match for the
prosecutor’s budget.
Still, I’m okay that not every
armed White man who kills people
while playing the role of a wannabe
cop gets millions of dollars to turbo-
charge his privilege. I am glad that
the defense is not as well-financed
for the three men on trial for murderin Georgia after they killed Ahmaud
Arbery as he jogged through their
neighborhood.
When defendant Travis McMi-
chael took the stand, his testimony
was not nearly as smooth as Ritten-
house’s — perhaps because McMi-
chael did not have as many chances
to practice. Indeed, McMichael, tes-
tifying about how he, his father and
a neighbor hunted down a Black
man and demanded that he stop and
justify his presence on public
streets, sounded like a slave catcher.
This was fitting because empower-
ing White civilians to apprehend
runaway slaves was the origin of the
Georgia citizens’ arrest law — since
revised — that is the linchpin of the
defense.
That defense appears to be floun-
dering. Maybe that is why, with
closing statements scheduled for
Monday, the lawyer for defendant
William “Roddie” Bryan reportedly
asked prosecutors if his client could
cop a plea.
All criminal defendants have a
right to spend as much money as
they want on their case, but it’s a
fanciful right for most defendants of
color. Let them eat cake, and let
them hire jury consultants. There is
nothing wrong with begrudging all
the resources Rittenhouse was pro-
vided to fight his case when those
resources are a product of his White-
ness. Maybe that’s not the high road,
but the high road is not leading to
equal justice.
In the Georgia trial, in a sign of its
confidence, the prosecution report-
edly turned down Bryan’s late re-
quest for a plea. Perhaps if those
defendants had Kyle Rittenhouse’s
kind of money, things would be
going differently. I am glad they
don’t.PAUL BUTLERKyle Rittenhouse’s defensewas the best money can buySEAN KRAJACIC/THE KENOSHA NEWS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kyle Rittenhouse looks at his attorneys during his trial in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 18.Democrats tried to counter with logic
and verifiable facts, a daring tactic in
the Sunshine State: More than 195 mil-
lion Americans have been vaccinated
and, with extremely rare exceptions,
they are fine. Most of those in intensive
care units are unvaccinated. Children
have long been required to get vaccines
to go to school. George Washington
forced his soldiers to get smallpox vac-
cines to help win the Revolutionary
War.
Then, Democrats evoked the days,
not so long ago, when people were
hoarding toilet paper and feared that
touching a box of cereal at the super-
market might be deadly. Remember
how badly we wanted a vaccine? The
Democrats even threw the Republicans
a bone, pointing out that the vaccine
success story was President Donald
Trump’s doing.
“What has happened to us as a coun-
try?” state Sen. Gary Farmer (D) asked
on the Senate floor. “Sacrifices are made
for the greater good. Not for the
squeaky, loud wheel over here who puts
rationality and science aside because
they want to make a statement.”
Children, and teachers, also fell out-
side the reach of the greater good. The
new law codifies that parents, not pub-
lic schools, decide whether children
should wear masks or get vaccinated.
Parents who sue defiant schools that
ignore the law can recoup their attor-
neys’ fees if they succeed.
Luckily, DeSantis did not get every-
thing he wanted. He pushed for an
outright ban on vaccine mandates for
private-sector employees and threat-
ened to strip offending companies of
their covid-19 liability protection, a rare
anti-business gambit by the governor.
But lawmakers, apparently haunted by
visions of diminished campaign coffers,
recoiled. It would have meant aggravat-Florida’s Republican governor,
Ron DeSantis, doesn’t often ask
for help. He is a go-it-alone kind
of guy who has largely chosen to
tackle the coronavirus pandemic solo,
making a calculated political wager on
Darwinian logic, balmy weather and
the hobbled common sense of many
F loridians.
The results earned Florida top 10
status in per capita U.S. covid-19 deaths
— nearly 61,000 as of Friday. But, hey, at
least the state’s economy is rolling!
Recently, though, DeSantis changed
his tune out of necessity. He needed the
power of the Republican-packed Flori-
da legislature to help him officially free
us Floridians from the tyranny of Presi-
dent Biden’s vaccine mandates.
On Wednesday night, during a legis-
lative special session, lawmakers passed
a package of bills making it harder for
businesses to make sure their Florida
employees are vaccinated, and impossi-
ble for local governments and schools to
require masks or vaccines.
The legislature handed DeSantis a
political gift. He can now proclaim to his
Republican base that he is America’s
freedom-iest leader. Then, in a stroke of
political theater on Thursday, DeSantis
signed the bills into law in Brandon,
Fla., amid a predictable fanboy chorus
of “Let’s go Brandon,” a cryptic insult
aimed at Biden.
The victory was the governor’s latest
assault on the noble notion of collective
good — a term now seemingly viewed by
his supporters as communism writ
large.
“I’m a farmer. I look at things in
simple terms,” said state Sen. Ben
A lbritton (R) on the Senate floor on
Wednesday. “What I believe that we are
doing here today is we are choosing to
support, protect and defend individual
rights.”ing Disney, for example, which man-
dates vaccinations and masks for most
employees at its sites.
Instead, Florida companies can re-
quire vaccinations as long as they offer
five opt-outs: medical or religious ex-
emptions, evidence of natural immuni-
ty from covid based on a medical test, or
the willingness of the employee to be
tested periodically or wear a mask.
Exemptions under the new law also
include pregnancy or “anticipating
pregnancy,” a vague term that presum-
ably gives cover to practically all women
in the workforce. If these alternatives
are not offered, businesses risk fines of
at least $10,000 per violation.
The Biden administration also offers
exemptions, only they are narrower.
Health-care and nursing-home workers
can apply for religious or medical carve-
outs. And other private-sector employ-
ees of large companies can opt out by
getting tested every week.
The new Florida law also forces some
businesses into a tug of war between the
state and federal government. Hospi-
tals, nursing homes and other care facil-
ities that accept Medicare and Medicaid
stand to lose crucial funds if they don’t
adhere to Biden’s vaccine mandate.
DeSantis and Republican legislators
have abandoned any pretense of con-
servative opposition to big government,
wresting control from schools, local
governments and private companies —
the entities that would know what’s best
for their own communities, employees
and bottom lines. They are even plan-
ning a new agency, a state version of the
Occupational Safety and Health Admin-
istration, to skirt Biden’s rules.
There is, however, a sliver of good
news to come out of this not-so-special
session: The legislation expires in June- Let’s hope by then it will have
become irrelevant.
LIZETTE ALVAREZAnother blow against the common good