The ten dimmest bulbs in Congress
Anonymous
The ten dimmest bulbs in Congress
The Progressive
Sept 1995
By Ken Silverstein and Steve Brodner
H.L. Mencken once wrote that since elections produced such dreadful
results, citizens should stop wasting their time voting and simply pick
their representatives at random from the phone book. Mencken's barb has
even more sting these days since the quality of political leadership seems
to have dropped precipitously, as a few random hours watching C-Span
quickly reveals.
Identifying the ten most dimwitted members of Congress was a difficult
task. To do so, I canvassed several dozen sources--liberal and
conservative, Democrat and Republican--on Capitol Hill. Seven freshmen and
one sophomore won a place on the list. Thanks to the sheer brute stupidity
of these newcomers, world-class contenders like New York Senator Alfonse
D'Amato and California Representative Bob Dornan didn't even come close to
making the final cut.
Before turning to the roll call, a few caveats.
First, I intended to create a bipartisan list, but was unable to come up
with any suitable Democratic candidates. This in no way reflects the high
intellectual caliber of the party, which has its fair share of nitwits.
However, I found that while Democrats were eager to point to Republicans,
the opposite was not the case: Republicans fingered their own. "That's the
luxury you have when you're in the majority," one Democratic staffer
complained bitterly.
Second, while most of the members here come from the GOP's rightwing, it
would be a mistake to conclude, as many liberals do, that conservatives are
generally dumb: Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms are anything but stupid.
Finally, while the distinguished members of the list may enrich the
nation's political folklore, their foolishness is dangerous.
That said, the winners are:
No. 10 Representative Martin Hoke Ohio (first elected in 1992)
Hoke, a millionaire businessman, was a political unknown when he defeated
Representative Mary Rose Oakar in 1992. He's accomplished little in
Washington and would likely still be unknown if it weren't for his frequent
blunders.
After President Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address, Hoke and a
Democratic colleague, Eric Fingerhut, were asked for comment by a local
network affiliate. The pair was wired up by producer Lisa Dwyer. As she
walked away, Hoke--unaware that his observations were being recorded by an
open microphone--exclaimed in a mock accent, "She has the beeeeeg breasts."
The day after this slip, Hoke expressed a certain relief when an escaped
Ohio convict went on a murder spree, suggesting to a reporter that the
killings might knock his remark about Dwyer off the front pages of local
newspapers.
This was not Hoke's only slip in the area of gender politics. Interviewed
by The New York Times's Maureen Dowd about the life of the single man on
Capitol Hill, Hoke, a divorce, replied, "I could date Maria Cantwell or
Blanche Lambert--they're hot." Cantwell and Lambert, fellow members of
Congress, were not amused.
Hoke fervently attacks "big government," but sometimes seems unfamiliar
with his target. In 1992, he was demanding urgent reform at the Federal
Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, an agency abolished three years
earlier.
When Hoke defeated Oakar he had the band at his victory party play, "Ding
Dong, the Witch Is Dead." Commenting on Hoke's D.C. exploits, Oakar has
suggested that the Congressman should change the tune to another song from
The Wizard of Oz: "If I Only Had a Brain."
No. 9 Representative Don Young Alaska (1973)
The new head of the House Resources Committee, Young is best known for his
rabid attacks on ecologists. Animal-rights advocate Mary Tyler Moore once
read a poem about the cruelty of steel-jaw leghold traps before the
Merchant Marine subcommittee, where Young previously served. Accompanying
Moore was Cleveland Amory, who periodically inserted a pencil in a trap,
causing it to snap shut.
The moment was highly charged and Young, as a hunter and trapper, realized
dramatic action was required to turn the tide. His solution was to place
his hand into a trap he had brought along to the hearing, and then begin to
calmly question a witness as though nothing unusual had happened. "I never
told anyone, but it hurt like hell," Young later confided to a
Congressional staffer.
Young also made use of a visual aid at a 1994 hearing during which he waved
an 18-inch oosik--the penis bone of the walrus--at Mollie Beattie, director
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Beattie had suggested that Alaskan
Natives should be able to sell oosiks only as handicrafts, not uncarved, a
proposal Young derided. The incident was especially embarrassing because
Beattie is the first woman to head the Service, and the hearing marked her
debut on the Hill.
Earlier this year, a group of students in Fairbanks invited the Alaskan
wild man to speak about the GOP's "Contract with America." Young expounded
on a number of his favorite topics, including the need to slash federal
funding of the arts. The government, Young said, has funded "photographs of
people doing offensive things" and "things that are absolutely ridiculous."
One student asked Young what sort of things he had in mind. "Buttfucking,"
the Congressman replied (a reference to a 1990 exhibit of Robert
Mapplethorpe photographs in Cincinnati supported by the National Endowment
for the Arts). Young defended his remarks, saying he was merely "trying to
educate" the inquisitive youngsters.
No. 8 Representative Sonny Bono California (1994)
Sonny Bono, the new Representative of California's forty-fourth district,
is best known in his post-Cher incarnation for his four guest appearances
on Love Boat. He didn't enter politics because of any keen desire to better
the world. He was simply mad about how long it took to get a permit to open
a restaurant in Palm Springs.
Bono's mental shortcomings have long made him a subject of scorn among
California politicians. During his run for Congress last year, Palm Desert
councilman Walt Snyder called Bono a "laughingstock," and Representative Al
McCandless charged that he took "pride in not having studied [the] issues
until just a few months ago." Snyder and McCandless, incidentally, are both
Republicans, and they both supported Bono in his race against Democrat
Steve Clute.
Bono served as mayor of Palm Springs between 1988 and 1992. His
public-relations director, Marilyn Baker, later revealed to the Los Angeles
Times that she had to rewrite the mayor's agendas into script form so Bono
could conduct official business. "For call to order, I wrote, 'Sit.' For
salute the flag, I wrote, 'Stand up, face flag, mouth words.' For roll
call, I wrote, 'When you hear your name, say yes,'" recalled Baker, who
quit after three depressing months of service.
Bono's current legislative director, Curt Hollman, is charged with the
Herculean task of summarizing complex issues in short, simple memos that
Bono can comprehend. Unfortunately, Hollman can't watch over Bono during
all of his assignments. At one Judiciary Committee hearing, Bono
complained, "Boy, it's been flying in this room like I can't believe today.
We have a very simple and concise bill here, and I think it would be to
everyone's pleasure if we would just pass this thing." This prompted New
York's Charles E. Schumer to dryly reply, "We're making laws here, not
sausages."
On another occasion, Bono complained that his colleagues were becoming
needlessly bogged down in "technical" matters and legalese. This about the
Judiciary Committee, which writes laws and deals with trifling matters such
as constitutional protections.
No. 7 Representative Jack Metcalf Washington (1994)
Metcalf describes himself as "a guy willing to take some kamikaze runs," a
statement reflected in some of his policy stances. He has advocated, for
example, a return to the gold standard and the abolition of paper money.
Even The Wall Street Journal once mocked Metcalf for keeping company with
"gold bugs, tax protesters, and conspiracy theorists," and noted with
concern that he had secretly buried in the woods thousands of dollars in
silver coins in expectation that "a cataclysm of some sort [will] engulf
the nation."
Metcalf frequently adopts positions that don't square with his actions. He
is an ardent champion of term limits, yet he has served for tenty-four
years in the Washington state legislature. During the 1994 campaign, he
pounded his Democratic opponent, Harriet Spanel, with charges that she
opposed the death penalty and was generally indulgent of the criminal
element. Then, during the final days of the race, the Metcalf camp covertly
contracted prisoners at the Washington State Reformatory to conduct its
telemarketing operation.
The sixty-seven-year-old Metcalf is an old-fashioned sort, as seen in his
views on curbing teen pregnancies. As he told interviewers from Republican
Beat--a fictitious youth magazine dreamed up by Spy--people under sixteen
"need to be closely chaperoned by their parents. They won't like that, but
what causes teenage pregnancies all over that we're worried about is
unchaperoned kids. Period."
Despite his lack of brain power, the courtly Metcalf is popular in
Congress, where he is seen as a well-meaning simpleton. "Jack wants to do
the right thing," says one House staffer. "He just doesn't have a clue as
to what the right thing is."
No. 6 Representative J.D. Hayworth Arizona (1994)
A former TV sportscaster and football player, Hayworth, like Gerald Ford,
appears to have forgotten his helmet one too many times. At a recent
convention of People for the West!, a group linked to the Wise Use
movement, Hayworth said that logging was a particularly beneficial activity
because forests are a fire hazard.
Hayworth's entire political philosophy can be boiled down to "Big
government, bad; less government, good." The Arizona Republic has said that
"substance has never been a strong suit of Hayworth's (even by
sportscasting standards)," and that he even has "to read his cliches from a
script."
Hayworth's major activity since coming to Washington--and one that
invariably sets off waves of anguished head-slapping on the floor--is his
daily one-minute statement. His attempts at humor elicit groans, as when he
suggested to the opposition party that it "hire Freddy Krueger as the new
liberal Democrat spokesman" and "set up a new political-action committee,
the 'Whine Producers.'"
Though decidedly dumb, Hayworth is also smooth and relentless. "You can't
have a real debate with Hayworth," says one Democratic staffer. "He talks
as passionately about his need to take a No. 1 as he does about the need to
cut government spending."
No. 5 Representative John Hostettler Indiana (1994)
Hostettler's dumb roots run deep. He's an enthusiast of Dan "Potatoe"
Quayle, who campaigned on Hostettler's behalf. And he has Quayle's penchant
for putting his foot in his mouth.
In opposing gun control to a group of high-school students, he suggested
that the Second Amendment allowed for the private ownership of nuclear
weapons as well as handguns. He alienated Jewish voters when at a
candidates' forum he made reference to the people "who killed Jesus
Christ."
Hostettler sometimes cites historical precedent in pushing the Contract
with America, though his grasp of the subject is shaky at best. He blithely
supported slashing government spending, including deep cuts in social
programs, saying in a speech on the House floor on March 16 that "American
society can and will take better care of its needy without the interference
of the federal government." To back this assertion, he referred to the
progressive era, when "local charitable agencies" looked after the poor.
(Never mind progressive-era books, like Lincoln Steffens's The Shame of the
Cities and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, that detailed the urban misery that
private charities failed to dent.) "The signature notion of the progressive
era was the demand for government regulation to ameliorate society's
injustices," says Josh Brown, a historian and media director of Hunter
College's American Society History Project. "Hostettler's got his history
all wrong."
No. 4 Representative Frank Cremeans Ohio (1994)
"The Greeks and the Romans were homosexuals. Their civilizations did not
stand. Did they come in contact with a social disease like AIDS? I don't
know the answer. But I wonder." This was Frank Cremeans pondering the
enigmas of history during the 1994 campaign against Democrat Ted
Strickland. Comments like this prompted the Dayton Daily News to call
Cremeans "a bad joke" whose election would constitute "a mockery of
democracy."
Cremeans has continued to make bizarre statements since taking up residence
in the Capitol. He once declared his opposition to sex before marriage,
saying that "marriage is a very sanctimonious commitment." In an interview
with a radio station in Marietta, Ohio, during which he discussed
Congress's first 100 days under Newt Gingrich, Cremeans excitedly declared
to the show's host, "Just think about it, Mike, we're advancing backwards!"
Cremenas might have ranked lower here but, unlike some of his competitors,
is smart enough to know he's dumb. He wisely refuses to answer any
substantive questions from the press or public, referring all such
inquiries to his chief of staff, Barry Bennett, a prominent Ohio Republican
who is viewed in Washington as Cremean's babysitter. "His handlers can tell
him anything and he'll simply repeat it over and over," says one committee
staffer familiar with Cremeans. "He takes direction well but when he tries
to think on his feet he quickly gets into trouble."
No. 3 Senator Larry Pressler South Dakota (1978)
Most recently noted for his attacks on public broadcasting, Pressler, the
only Senator to make the list, is considered to be a hopeless nitwit by
virtually all of his colleagues. Ted Kennedy once asked a former Senatorial
colleague of Pressler, "Has he had a lobotomy?" South Dakota's other
senator, Thomas Daschle, said of Pressler, "A Senate seat is a terrible
thing to waste."
Pressler has had repeated difficulties with closets. On one occasion he
fell asleep in one and arrived late to an important hearing. In another
incident he rose from a meeting with colleagues in the Commerce Committee
and mistook a closet door for the exit. He realized his mistake but
aparently thought the best strategy would be to wait to emerge until
everyone else left the room, a tactic that failed when his companions
decided to wait him out.
Pressler has sponsored virtually no important legislation during his two
decades in Washington, a fact he seeks to obscure by issuing frequent press
releases touting his meager achievements. One example: "New York Times
Carries Pressler Drought Letter."
Parliamentary procedure has never been one of Pressler's strong points.
During the recent mark-up of the Omnibus Telecommunications Bill, lobbyists
assisting the proceedings on TV from a Commerce Committee anteroom roared
with laughter as Chairman Pressler mangled the hearings. To keep him from
participating in committee afairs, Republican staffers distract Pressler
with a constant stream of unimportant memos.
No. 2 Representative Helen Chenoweth Idaho (1994)
Chenoweth--an ultraconservative who prefers to be called Congressman--is a
close political and philosophical ally of the loonier sectors of the
militia movement. Earlier this year she claimed that federal agents
enforcing the Endangered Species Act were landing black helicopters on
ranchers' properties in western states.
On the campaign trail last year, Chenoweth held fundraisers where she sold
baked Sockeye Salmon, an endangered species. Asked if she believed the
Sockeye were truly threatened, she said, "How can I, when you can go in and
you can buy a can of salmon off the shelf in Albertson's?" According to
Chenoweth, "It's the white Anglo-Saxon male that's endangered today."
To one group of scientists who testified before the resources committee,
Chenoweth said, "I want to thank you for all being here and I condemn the
panel." At a field hearing on the Endangered Species Act in New Bern, North
Carolina, she apologized to a witness, saying, "I didn't understand
everything you said. You all talk so funny down here." On the House floor,
she once protested, "Excuse me, but can someone please explain what an
ecosystem is?"
Chenoweth blindly attacks any proposal emanating from the White House. She
once arrived badly late to an energy subcommittee hearing, and quickly
began attacking Administration officials who were testifying about a
proposed bill that she opposed. The acting chair, John Doolittle of
California, finally cut Chenoweth off to inform her that the officials
shared her position.
No. 1 Representative Jon Christensen Nebraska (1994)
Unquestionably the dumbest man to serve in the 104th Congress, Christensen
rails against the "liberal elite," whom he claims is out of touch with the
daily struggles of common folk. Christensen himself has no achievements to
speak of, and, prior to his election, lived off the interest income of his
wife, Meredith, who springs from a rich Texas clan.
After graduating from law school, Christensen twice failed the Nebraska bar
exam, finally squeaking through on his third attempt. No law firm would
hire him (except for clerking duties), so Christensen was forced to sell
insurance. He supplemented his income by peddling lawn fertilizer out of
his garage. In a brazen display of resume inflation, Christensen now
describes his past positions as "Insurance Marketing Director" and
"Fertilizer Holding Company Executive."
During the 1994 campaign, Christensen held a question-and-answer session at
Omaha's Westside High School. Apparently fearful that their man would
wither under pressure, Christensen's aides prepared questions in advance
and handed them out to students who were volunteers for his campaign,
telling them to clutch their pens in their hand so the candidate would know
who to call on. Other students learned of the fix, and foiled Christensen's
plot by holding pens in their hands when asking questions. "If he can't
stand up to a roomful of seventeen-year-olds, how is he going to stand up
to the U.S. Congress?" Westside senior Joey Hornstein asked the local
press.
During a radio interview in Nebraska, Christensen vigorously attacked
welfare recipients, saying he favored cutting all government "hand-outs and
subsidies" to "eliminate people's reliance on government." When the host
pointed out that Christensen had outstanding student loans of between
$30,000 and $100,000, the Congressman feebly replied, "Well, I wouldn't
have been able to go to school if I didn't have a student loan."
In another staggering display of imbecility, Christensen once called a
press conference to announce his personal deficit-reduction plan, which
called for cuts in government spending of $1.5 trillion. When informed by a
reporter that $1.5 trillion was the entire budget, a bewildered Christensen
hastily changed topics.
WESFAGER
Thanks for the post.