Two incidents occurred in Congress on the eve of the Thanksgiving recess that made all the evening network newscasts and added two black eyes to an already badly bruised and broken legislative body.
In the Senate, a senator and witness at a committee hearing traded insults and almost came to blows but for the intervention of the chairman who gaveled them to be seated and reminded his colleague, “You are a United States senator.”
In the House, a member chased the former House Speaker down the hall, accusing him of sucker-punching him in the kidneys. A third member, who had not witnessed the event, filed an ethics complaint against the former Speaker (against whom he had also led the successful effort to remove him as Speaker).
According to an October 2023 Gallup poll, only 13 percent of the public approves of the way Congress is handling its job. Those dismal findings do not seem to have curbed members’ persistence in behaving badly. If anything, in this age of performative politics many members seem to thrive on any media attention they receive for their antics, no matter how bizarre. It’s almost as if they had purposely skipped the introductory lecture on civility and decorum during their freshman orientation.
Thomas Jefferson, in his “Manual of Parliamentary Practice,” which he compiled while presiding over the Senate as vice president, comments on the importance of regular rules of proceeding as being a check on the actions of the majority and a protection for the minority against attempts at power. He concludes, “It is very material that order, decency, and regularity be preserved in a dignified public body.”
Jefferson leaned heavily on the precedents of the British Parliament in preparing his manual. He cautions in a later section on “Order in Debate” that members are not to digress from the matter under debate by going after another member using unmannerly words or arraigning their motives. That would be engaging in personality which is against order.
Despite these rules and admonitions, the precedents of the British House of Commons are replete with instances of what Jefferson refers to as “assaults and affrays” when “warm words or an assault have passed between members” requiring the intervention of the Speaker “to accommodate their differences” and restore order.
The footnote to that section in the House Manual cites “several instances of assaults and affrays that have occurred on the floor of the U.S. House.” According to an account by the House historian’s office, “The most infamous floor brawl in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives erupted as members debated the Kansas Territory’s pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution late into the night” on Feb. 5-6, 1858. A Pennsylvania Republican and a South Carolina Democrat exchanged insults, then blows, and before long the entire House was thrown into “the greatest confusion,” with more than 30 members joining the melee.
Speaker James Orr tried to gavel the throng to order and then sent the Sergeant-at-Arms to wade into the fray, holding the Mace high to enforce the Speaker’s edict. When two of the members ripped the hairpiece off the head of another “the melee dissolved into a chorus of laughs and jeers.” Nevertheless, “the sectional nature of the fight powerfully symbolized the nation’s divisions.” Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.
While much is made of the “assaults and affrays” that occurred in Congress during the run-up to the Civil War, the precedents are filled with other incidents that took place during other periods in our history. Most of these are one-on-one confrontations between members over perceived insults and heated rhetoric. For instance, in 1838 “warm words and an assault having passed between two members” gave rise to “great disorder in the Committee of the Whole.” The Speaker took the chair…to bring the House into order. The House then required the two members to apologize “for violating its privileges and offending its dignity.”
The disorder and even threatened violence in Congress today does not begin to approach the tumult of the Civil War era. Still, it is a matter of great concern as it mirrors a coarsening of public discourse and sharpening of partisan divisions. The perils of a representative democracy are always exposed when policy differences and personal disagreements combine to ignite and the usual norms of institutional dignity and comity are ignored.
One of the principal challenges of the new House Speaker should be to find ways to re-educate members and instill in them a greater respect for the institution over their petty grievances, personal enmities and performative proclivities.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as minority staff director of the House Rules Committee (1989-94) and chief-of-staff of the full committee (1995-97). He is author of “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018). The views expressed are solely his own.