At a bi-partisan meeting in the Oval Office held in 2009 to discuss health care legislation, (l-r), President Barack Obama is seen in the background conversing with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). In the foreground are Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Sen. Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Vice President Joe Biden. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
Congresswoman Liz Cheney is purported to live in Wilson,
Wyoming. But her presence in Jackson Hole has been conspicuously scarce, at
least that’s what many of her constituents say.
Despite numerous invitations to attend town hall meetings with
the citizens she represents, Cheney has been a no-show, declining to look Teton
County residents in the eye and listen to what they have to say.
According to the account of one person who did speak with her,
the Congresswoman allegedly said she “didn’t want to subject herself to any
possible abusive remarks” she might receive from Wyomingites.
It’s an attitude and a pattern of behavior repeated often
this year with Congressional delegation members from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho
deliberately ignoring voters and instead attending meetings only sponsored by
hard-core supporters and campaign contributors who tell them what they want to
hear.
I’ve heard that Ms. Cheney stridently avoids returning
phone calls from any media outlets she suspects will ask her tough questions. Arguably, by her actions, Cheney isn’t
promoting transparency in government or accountability to the people she serves
but is rather contributing to divisiveness and the breakdown of civility.
It didn’t always used to be this way. The
late U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop, his retired colleague Alan K. Simpson, even Ms.
Cheney’s father, former Vice President and Congressman Dick Cheney, did not
brazenly brush off constituents or the media.
They knew that mixing it up came with the job.
Earlier this year, just after he completed his assignment
as U.S. Ambassador to China, I met with Max Baucus, who served 36 years in the
U.S. senate, the longest senate tenure in state history, topping even legendary Mike Mansfield’s.
As I interviewed Baucus for a story in the current issue
of Mountain Outlaw magazine, I asked him what triggered the rise in incivility.
“I ask myself that question often,” he said.
“I don’t have a good answer.”
Baucus, however, shared an observation about the old
senate dining room, a place that once served as a private sanctum for senators
only, where they got to know each other personally, talked candidly about their
families and hardships, and related to each other as human beings.
The dining room closed down a decade ago as, evermore,
senators began spending time with lobbyists, at fundraisers and party strategy
sessions. The age of social media and
partisan cable channels also have contributed to the bitter atmosphere.
“Part of it is on us, too,” Baucus said, meaning citizens.
“If we want those in Washington DC to exercise more comity, citizens have got
to push for it and exercise more comity themselves.”
Baucus offered a blunt challenge: Citizens
need to demand accountability from elected officials. In rural states, neither should
they allow members of Congress to ignore them nor should they settle for having
contact only with the grunt-level staffers of a senator, governor, member of
Congress or any other elected official.
Citizens, Baucus said, should demand to
meet face to face with individual elected officials or, at the very least, get
their calls returned. If at first they are rebuffed, be vigilant. If a federal or state lawmaker doesn’t
give them respect, call them out in the newspaper. Don’t accept no for an
answer, he said. It might require taking just a few minutes out of one’s busy
life, maybe a total of 10 minutes if a constituent must make six calls to
finally get through, but it makes a difference, he assures.
Contrary to the opinions of cynics, citizens wield more
clout than they know. But they don’t make their clout register. They allow
politicians to get off easy, he said.
Do members of the Wyoming, Montana and Idaho congressional delegations now dodging town hall meetings have the courage to give out their personal emails and cell phone numbers? More importantly, do they have the stomach to get a lashing from constituents who are concerned about the direction of the country?
Baucus smirks incredulously when he hears
complaints that politicians have placed themselves beyond reach or actively
evade town hall meetings.
“We are very lucky in Montana. It’s much,
much easier than it would be in California or New York to reach an elected
official,” he said. “I gave my personal email out to everybody. I gave out my
phone number to everybody. I was totally accessible to everybody. If anybody
wanted to write me a letter or call me, I was there. I made a point of
responding if someone insisted I get back to them and sometimes those
conversations changed my mind on issues.”
Sighing, he added, “Having said this, I’m
kind of surprised, and slightly disappointed, frankly, that I didn’t get more
telephone calls. I got a good number but I wanted more.”
Do members of the Wyoming, Montana and
Idaho congressional delegations now dodging town hall meetings have the courage to give out their personal
emails and cell phone numbers? More
importantly, do they have the stomach to get a lashing from constituents who
are concerned about the direction of the country?
Baucus himself got an earful from
Montanans when he helped get the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, passed
into law but refused to support a single payer system or all-out universal
health care coverage for all Americans.
Still, he didn’t cower. “You can’t hide
from the people you represent,” he said. “If you do that, you don’t deserve to
be in office.”
Former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to China Max Baucus sits next to his close friend, the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts at a policy meeting in Washington,D.C. Baucus revered Kennedy's ability to stand on principle and maintain cordial, respectful relationships with those on the other side of the political aisle. Photo courtesy The White House
About Todd Wilkinson
Todd Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, is author of the book Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and American's Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem. Wilkinson has been writing about Greater Yellowstone for 35 years and is a correspondent to publications ranging from National Geographic to The Guardian. He is author of several books on topics as diverse as scientific whistleblowers and Ted Turner, and a book about the harrowing story of Jackson Hole grizzly mother 399, the most famous bear in the world which features photographs by Thomas Mangelsen. For more information on Wilkinson, click here. (Photo by David J Swift).
