National Review/Philip H. DeVoe: Congressional Hearings Need Aggressive Reform

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Congressional Hearings Need Aggressive Reform
By Philip H. DeVoe

May 5, 2018 6:30 AM

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, April 10, 2018. (Alex Brandon/Pool/Reuters)
A once-valuable legislative tool has become yet another excuse for partisan posturing.

Congress has hit a new low. Pro-Trump vloggers Diamond and Silk, real names Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, were invited to the Capitol last week so they could answer questions about the alleged suppression of their content by Facebook. Not only did it become quickly clear that such suppression probably never happened — ThinkProgress ran the numbers, and rather than experiencing a drop in interactions during the time period in question, the bloggers’ page received a boost — but Diamond and Silk managed to turn their congressional platform into the worst kind of reality show. It involved lots of screaming from the former and reaffirming utterances and nodding from the latter, and it made a mockery of a once-valuable Senate tool.

Inviting the duo in the first place was indefensible, as it couldn’t have accomplished much more than bolstering the thin case many on the right make for their victimization by sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Maybe that’s why every member of the committee except Democrat Ted Lieu had left the room by the end of the hearing; it seems even the Republicans were sickened by the whole show. Even Lieu, who stuck around, did so to, in his words, try and salvage something from this “stupid and ridiculous hearing.”

Congressional Democrats aren’t in a position to point fingers, of course. Republicans may have invited Diamond and Silk, but most such hearings have long been hollow partisan charades meant to advance the illusion that the legislative body is actually legislating or give the party in control fodder for campaign ads.

This isn’t the first congressional hearing in which Congress overstepped its role. Over the years, it has held a number of hearings on the activities of Major League Baseball. Those hearings have ranged from investigations into whether specific players used performance-enhancing drugs (in 2005) to an attempt to settle the 1995 players’ strike, when then-senator Joe Biden (D., Del.) threatened to “hold hearings on all sports.” In 2001, members of the band Metallica testified before Congress to protest Napster’s illegal use of their music. Naturally, it wasn’t legislation stemming from this information-gathering hearing that shuttered Napster, but the courts.

    There are countless problems that need to be addressed before the legislative branch is restored to its rightful place in American government, but congressional-hearing reform seems as good a place to start as any.

Viewers of these hearings, and the members themselves, often seem to forget that Congress isn’t a court, but because it isn’t, another serious problem arises: It’s not hard to avoid answering a tough congressional question. A tactic used by James Comey during his notorious June 2017 hearing was refusing to answer some of the most probing questions by declaring the information being sought confidential, and thus reserved for private conversations with those bearing the proper security clearance. Mark Zuckerberg informed senators that he wasn’t aware of specifics that might’ve helped validate allegations of data-selling schemes. Oliver North’s lawyer, during North’s testimony before the Iran-Contra Committee, avoided potentially damning questions by declaring them “damaging” to his client’s reputation. The most promising hearings are often derailed when a witness pleads the Fifth.

Even when Congress attempts to exercise a legitimate oversight role, the result is often partisan deadlock. The Whitewater hearings are a good example. They ought to be a model for what congressional hearings should look like, yet after 60 sessions totaling 300 hours and 35,000 pages of depositions taken from 245 people, the Special Whitewater Committee came to this conclusion, as summed up by David Maraniss in the Washington Post: “The Republicans, in their final report, accused the Clinton White House of stonewalling and obfuscating; and the Democrats, in a minority rebuttal, claimed that the president and first lady had been victimized by a modern-day witch hunt.”

Meanwhile, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s simultaneous investigation turned up evidence that led to the conviction of 15 people for a total of 40 crimes. Hardly a witch hunt, and clearly unimpeded by all that stonewalling and obfuscation.

Maraniss went on to point out how different the Whitewater hearings were from the Watergate hearings. During the congressional Watergate investigation, a commitment to finding the truth overrode partisanship and resulted in probing questions that generated quality answers. As a result, Congress was able to help prosecutors secure convictions and to force resignations, rather than running an impotent sideshow.

Comments   

Diamond and Silk did not appear before Congress last week as part of any significant search for the truth. Their hearing wasn’t even an attempt to gather information. It was nothing more than an effort by right-wing congressmen to demonstrate that conspiracy theories about social-media companies’ suppression of conservative views are worthy of outrage. It, like the Zuckerberg hearing and so many others, was mostly valuable in its ability to generate clips either side could cite to support their senator’s or congressman’s “domination” of a political foe.

No wonder poll after poll registers unprecedented levels of public contempt for Congress. There are countless problems that need to be addressed before the legislative branch is restored to its rightful place in American government, but congressional-hearing reform seems as good a place to start as any. So here’s an idea: Let’s turn off the cameras, and once again make information-gathering and truth-seeking about relevant topics within Congress’s scope the sole focus of such hearings.
Philip H. DeVoe — Philip H. DeVoe is a Collegiate Network Fellow with National Review. @PhilipDeVoe
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