The national media heavily reported this week that U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the Democrat from southeast Michigan who has served in the House longer than anyone else, is retiring.
That fact and some of Dingell’s accomplishments were on front pages of newspapers and pinned to the top of home pages of websites.
But if you paid attention, what was mostly left to blog posts and opinion pages like this one was the context about what his retirement solidified: that Congress no longer has any room for people who want to work for the country more than their own party. There’s only room — on both sides of the aisle, evidently — for folks who want to pick fights that can win political points for the party’s battle to find a suitable replacement for President Barack Obama.
That’s what all this infighting comes down to. The Democrats and the Republicans want to replace Obama with their man or woman, and they want to make the safest political moves to reach that goal.
Though power in the White House is always going to be a concern for Congress, when it’s a goal that trumps simple housekeeping measures such as passing a budget and paying our nation’s debts, it leaves trailblazers such as Dingell out in the cold.
It’s hard to believe there’s a man who has been in Congress so long he has voted for both the Affordable Care Act and the establishment of Medicare. But that’s Dingell. He was elected to office in the 1950s and has represented the folks of Detroit and now some of its suburbs.
Considering that my parents weren’t even born when he was first elected — and therefore I obviously wasn’t around to see most of his work — I had to do a bit of research on the man before I decided what I wanted to say about Dingell.
I’ve decided on this: Based on his commitment to the environment, health care reforms and the interests of his home state and the nation — not just his district — everyone in Congress should be ripping notes out of this man’s playbook.
He’s obviously a Democrat through-and-through, but D.C. veterans who know that scene have said Dingell got things done that he wanted done because he knew why he was there. He put policy over party.
As Bloomberg Businessweek put it: Dingell’s days “were simpler, friendlier times, when a day in the trenches with your foe ended with a beer or something stronger at the pub.”
Congress today “is not the Congress I know and love,” Dingell told the Detroit News.
Yes, Dingell, 87, is obviously stepping down for health reasons. But his departure should serve as a wake-up call for those in Congress obstructing America’s recovery from the Great Recession.
But my prediction: It won’t.
Still, it’s voters, Dingell said, who could fix Washington when their lawmakers aren’t willing to. The problem is that many people, though they give Congress abysmal reviews, are in love with their own senators and representatives.
So maybe the whole nation needs to put politics aside for a second, stop thinking about who will replace Obama in January 2017 and hone in what reforms — education, immigration, tax — this nation needs in 2014, 2015 and 2016. For the country’s sake.
“We need to love our country with great affection and intensity. Anyone doing less does disservice to themselves, the country, and their fellow Americans,” Dingell said in Michigan this week when he announced his retirement.
“Americans must change and they must insist that those who seek office and power do so. When that happens, things will start to turn for the better. We have much to be grateful for, and we owe it to ourselves, to each other, and to our fellow Americans to demand this of those seeking the privilege of power and office to make this change.”
Joshua Jamerson is a junior studying journalism and local editor of The Post. Do you think Washington can move past this era of partisan gridlock or are we stuck in this mode forever? Talk politics with Joshua at jj360410@ohiou.edu.
