A little chuckle from Alexandra Petri is just what the doctor ordered:
How right, how right Leader Kevin McCarthy was to accuse Nancy Pelosi of playing politics with the Jan. 6 commission! That is the last thing we need in this commission: a one-sided, negative attitude toward the events of Jan. 6.
Suppose Rep. Jim Jordan did possibly strategize with President Donald Trump about how to overturn the election, and suppose Rep. Jim Banks did say, “Speaker Pelosi created the committee solely to malign conservatives & justify the Left’s authoritarian agenda” — all the more reason to have them closely in the fold on the commission! How do we expect to hear both sides with a commission comprising solely people who think the insurrection was a bad thing?
Why, as currently constituted, the commission will discover only negative things about the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 that had members of Congress cowering for their lives in the face of an unhinged mob. The members are probably just going to look into all the so-called horrors that occurred and try to find ways of preventing the events of Jan. 6 from happening again — a pathetic, narrow-minded view, when a good, well-rounded commission would consider whether they maybe should happen again, and how to encourage them
Trying to include Jordan on the commission was a step in the right direction, certainly, but not far enough. A better commission would include, at minimum, the QAnon Shaman, as well as that man who burst into Pelosi’s office and left her an enraged, misspelled note. This commission will hear testimony of Eugene Goodman’s heroism, the quick thinking that left him facing a mob alone. But a truly balanced commission would consider how scary it was for the mob, as well!
This will be closer to getting a real picture of all the parts of Jan. 6 that otherwise might have been overlooked. On the one hand, many of those who were there that day going about their jobs are still rattled and scarred. But on the other hand, people took a lot of great selfies. Not to mention all the free redecorating that occurred! These facts would have gotten lost in all this needless denunciation.
How can we possibly move on when we focus solely on holding the rioters accountable and spare no thought for the millions of voters whose careless casting of their ballots for Joe Biden created this mess? How can America possibly heal if we insist on seeing only the bad side of an attempt to stop the peaceful functioning of our democracy and threaten the entire legislative branch, and not also the nifty things about it, such as how creative the headgear was and how many of the insurrectionists have mothers who love them? Or how good it would be if Donald Trump were still president, and what a coward Mike Pence was, say. I bet the commission will not even spare a single second to ponder whether everyone who was wounded, traumatized or killed might not have been overreacting?
I am just devastated to find that we are going to have a body that will take such a one-sided, limited view of an event that, for all we know, might have been a good thing. How political! How small-minded, how parochial! Truly, they are letting the country down.
That is why I am so relieved the House Republicans will be opening their own investigation into the events of Jan. 6. How good it will be to hear both sides.