A word of appreciation

to the members and staff of the Select Committee on January 6

Robert Reich

Jul 22

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Friends,

One final point about the Select Committee on January 6 as it concludes this series of hearings. Its members and staff deserve our heartfelt thanks for a job (although not over) extraordinarily well done.

So much has gone so wrong with so many aspects of our government and other institutions we rely on that I think it’s important to recognize and salute this sort of excellence. And courage.

Liz Cheney alone deserves a medal. Bernie Thompson handled the committee with grace and thoughtfulness. Adam Kinzinger did his job beautifully. Jamie Raskin was eloquent. Other members deserve kudos for their powerful presentations.

The committee’s format has remained disciplined and consistent since the committee aired its first televised hearing last month. Each hearing has dispensed with the usual awful aspects of congressional hearings -- bloated running times, grandstanding, endless speeches, badgering, cheap shots – while creating a coherent narrative across separate sessions. The hearings have constituted the most compelling televised hearings in history, Watergate included.

You’ll remember that Congressional Republicans initially stymied the formation of an independent commission to investigate January 6, then tried to appoint bad-faith wreckers to the House committee formed in lieu of the commission. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked those appointments, which prompted Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to declare that Republicans would boycott the panel altogether.

Many pundits criticized Pelosi at the time, arguing that the committee’s work would be perceived as purely partisan and therefore lack credibility. (“Those hoping that the committee might help us understand what happened on January 6,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote, “should give up on those hopes now.”) The fact that two Republican representatives, Cheney and Kinzinger, independently joined the committee, despite McCarthy’s wishes, apparently didn’t count as “bipartisanship” in the eyes of these critics.

But Pelosi has been proven correct.

America owes a deep debt of gratitude to the members of Congress and staff who have given us the most powerful and memorable depiction of the near-death of American democracy ever presented. Now it’s up to the rest of us – including Merrick Garland and the Justice Department – to display the same degree of excellence and courage, and ensure that American democracy endures.