Oklahoma's Lame DC Delegation
As Congress prepares to return from its summer recess, let us pause to assess the state of Oklahoma’s all-Republican DC delegation.
Fourth District Rep. Tom Cole chairs the House Appropriations Committee. Other than speaker, can there be a more powerful congressional post? Cole essentially controls the purse strings.
Then? Third District Rep. Frank Lucas chairs the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, but he’s probably better known as the former Agriculture Committee chair who helped craft nearly every farm bill since 1996.
Who else is notable, public policy-wise? Maybe senior Sen. James Lankford, who helped negotiate and write the bipartisan immigration reform bill that Donald Trump then helped kill because he figured border upheaval could help his bid to return to the White House.
Lankford absolutely did the right thing. He actually tried to help fix a serious problem. And he’s taken no small amount of grief for it within his own party. So now, if he dares stick his head out of the foxhole, it’s usually to blister Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ record on the issue. Or to claim – as he did in a recent NewsNation interview that Democrats weren’t nearly as full-throated in their support as they now claim.
Other than Cole, skimpy bona fides.
But remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Oklahoma had actual political giants operating along the Potomac.
Oxford-educated House Speaker Carl Albert twice was a heartbeat from the presidency. Sen. Robert S. Kerr was declared the “uncrowned king of the Senate” – and remembered today, 60-plus years after his death, for helping create the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. Sen. Henry Bellmon was a key figure in negotiating the Panama Canal treaty.
Of course, how Congress operates – or, in this era, doesn’t – has changed dramatically since Albert, Kerr and Bellmon were there. Now, it’s Gridlock City, hyper partisanship making it difficult, if not impossible to produce serious, visionary public policy.
What’s replaced the legislative heavy-lifting, for the most part, is the most venal sort of performance politics in which members line up to preen for the cameras and microphones and spout red-hot one-liners that do little but polarize the system even more.
Too harsh? Well, let’s consider two members of the Oklahoma delegation who can fairly be described as talkers, rather than doers.
This summer, 2nd District Rep. Josh Brecheen and U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin both distinguished [?] themselves with nutty talk that does precious little to edify the state they represent, much less the nation.
Speaking to the rightwing Newsmax audience, for example, Brecheen actually blamed the attempted Trump assassination on women in the Secret Service and on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
Really? So, in the 21st century, Brecheen thinks female Secret Service agents negatively affect the agency’s readiness and effectiveness. His view, then, is … what? That women are best left to wash, iron and repair his loincloths and polish his hunting club? And that “woke,” DEI policies are destroying what made America great: presumably, white Christian men?
Not to be outdone, Mullin later argued on CNN’s State of the Union that some convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists deserve leniency because they are fine people who just got “caught up in the political environment” and were then victimized by an unfair court system.
Sorry, senator, but getting swept up in mob violence that ransacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the lives of congressional leaders and Vice President Mike Pence, and sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is more than a parking ticket offense.
For the record, Mullin agrees those who attacked Capitol police should pay a hefty price: “They committed a crime, and they need to pay for that.” Yet Trump, in appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention, vowed to pardon the police attackers if he recaptures the presidency.
Statesmanship, where art thou?
[One last bit of bad news: The Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel reports Brecheen is helping MAGA-nuts in the Oklahoma Legislature create a Sooner version of the so-called Freedom Caucus. Just what we need: an official version of the far-right DC crew that makes lots of noise but couldn’t govern its way out of a paper bag.]