Congress presents: Political theater 2013

For the first time in a good while, we are about to be asked to stop some of what we're doing, pay attention and take measure of various allegations of wrongdoing in high Washington places. You know — Benghazi "talking points," the IRS' special attention to Tea Party groups, the Obama administration's snooping around reporters.

More often than not, television isolates us. But there are historical moments when TV — in combination with another oft-derided institution, Congress — brings the nation together, in a divided way.

The first step must be taken by Congress, specifically the House of Representatives. This is not necessarily a welcome state of affairs, since that institution, designed to be our most representative, is also generally the most despised, no matter which party controls it. But it will be up to the House to decide whether and how to use its power to investigate and interrogate.

There goes that little word — "gate" — again. Ever since Watergate, it seems to creep into our vocabulary whenever things go awry, governmentally speaking. And speaking of Watergate, it was 40 years ago this summer when the country finally paused to take time and take measure of various allegations. Hmmm …

It was the summer after a president had cruised to re-election, wasn't it? And the hearings focused on skullduggery prior to that re-election, didn't they? Hmmm ….

But let's not limit our recollections to Presidents Nixon and Obama. Since World War II, Congress has managed to convince the media and the country to stop and pay attention on six central occasions.

The first was the Hiss-Chambers spy case of 1948.

Early in the Cold War, the communist spy problem was a real one, but it had been generally ignored. By 1948, it was high time for the country to pay attention. Thanks to a confessed former communist, his very arrogant (and very guilty) accomplice in a sensitive government post, and an ambitious freshman congressman from California, that's exactly what happened.

That trio was, respectively, Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss and Richard Nixon.

A few years later, legitimate worries and investigations about communist influence had metastasized into McCarthyism. Liberals were properly horrified. So were many conservatives, including Whittaker Chambers. President Dwight Eisenhower chose to wait until the most relentless red-baiter, Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, overreached. He did. The result was the Army-McCarthy circus of 1954.

With the hearings broadcast by a fledgling ABC starved for daytime programming, the country finally tuned in and paid attention. Army counsel Joe Welch became an overnight TV star with a single line: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" McCarthy was revealed and embarrassed, halted and censured.

A little better than a decade later, America was mired in an undeclared and insufficiently explained war. Just what were we doing in Vietnam? And why? With President Lyndon Johnson nursing a "credibility gap," Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., put his Senate foreign-relations committee to work. With some help from the networks, Fulbright gave the country a history and foreign-policy lesson by inviting testimony from a number of prominent Americans. As a result, the ground began to shift under LBJ's Vietnam policy two years before the Tet Offensive and Eugene McCarthy.

Then came Nixon and Watergate in 1973. At issue was not just the break-in, the coverup and the dirty tricks. The larger issue was the imperial presidency that had grown with the Cold War. It was good for the country to stop, watch, listen and think. It was also good that Nixon resigned.

But the same imperial presidency reared its head again in the Iran-Contra mess in 1987. Could the White House run its own foreign policy? And could it defy Congress in the process? Such questions likely have no final or definitive answers. But the country was well-served by a public airing, even if the airing was not without political overtones. Politics intruding on a Washington scandal? Imagine that!

Politics produced calls for Ronald Reagan's impeachment, but nothing more. Eleven years later, Bill Clinton was actually impeached, but was kept in office after trial by the Senate. Just what is an impeachable offense? The Constitution isn't entirely clear on that. Now and again it's important to think about such things, even if they involve "just sex" and the obstruction of justice — or both.

So here we are on the verge of summer, 2013. It's been nearly 15 years since the last congressionally inspired, media-enhanced historical moment. That's longer than any previous interlude between these manufactured but nonetheless real events. So maybe it is time.

More than that, the current issues are real and important. Obama's is the imperial presidency on steroids. But it's simultaneously the diminished presidency. With the IRS and AP scandals, it's the imperial presidency/bureaucracy at war with American citizens. Or is it?

In Benghazi, it's a lead-from-behind commander-in-chief and a failure to rescue American personnel before covering up the real story. Or is it?

We're also about to get a glimpse into big government on steroids. Is such a government at all accountable? And if not, what can be done to rein it in? These are important questions to stop and think about.

Of course, all of this assumes that the past is prologue. It assumes that today's Congress is up to the task at hand. It also assumes that its targets will stonewall and talk, not necessarily in that order. It further assumes that questions like "what did the president know and when did he know it" will become increasingly important. Last, it assumes that the media will finally know a good story when it has one.

If all of that happens, it may still be summertime when the living is easy. But with Congress in session and on the prowl, the living is about to get very uneasy for some members of the executive branch.

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John C. (Chuck) Chalberg teaches at Normandale Community College in Bloomington.