DYNAMIC TENSION

     I used to enjoy building bicycle wheels. I was a dues-paying member of the Bicycle Repair Collective, which allowed me shop space, tools and workbenches, lubricants and bicycle parts. It was a relaxing past-time. A bicycle wheel is held straight and true thanks to the spokes pulling together on the rim with the same tension. This is called dynamic tension. Anyone who has ever seen a spoke break will have an idea how it works. One acquaintance who was employed by the Bike Gallery used a tuning fork to check a completed wheel.

     Congress could take a lesson. A bicycle wheel has 26, 32, or 36 spokes depending on whether the bike is a racing bike a road-bike or an off-rode bike, and depending on the weight of the rider. Congress has 100 senators and 435 members in the House. Because the Senators are elected by the whole state, they usually must be careful to not lose votes among the middle and left within their states. Even in red states there are voters who are centrist, or even left in their political orientation. They may be grossly outnumbered but they can be the difference between measuring the drapes in your Senate office, or going back to your civilian job embittered and disappointed. Not so the House of Representatives. Republicans are very good at one particular thing: they are masterful at gerrymandering districts so that even a Louie Gohmert or Lauren Boebuhrt can win a seat, only two of a basket of deplorables elected to Congress by the party that chose Sarah Palin as a vice -presidential nominee in 2008.

     Some years ago I was asked to be on a political action committee representing unions and other Democratic constituencies. I was assigned a trainer. On one of our training sessions we went to meet with Oregon's two Senators; Gordon Smith, a Republican and Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat. The difference between the two Senators was stark. Congressional tension was high in those days with Republicans in majority control of both houses and the Presidency. This was in the early days of the Iraq war. We could not anticipate tensions getting even greater after our first black President and his family moved into the white house that Republicans considered was for white men alone. I met my trainer at a roadside restaurant before our trip into Portland to visit with Sen. Smith. His office was in a modernistic glass office building on the Willamette River at the south end of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. I pause here to mention that Governor Tom McCall was a Republican that even we liberals admired. Aside from Ike, the only one. We entered on the ground floor and approached the desk, near the elevator. We were told to wait for the officer, who would escort us to the Senator's office. Several minutes later a uniformed guard approached us and led the way to a locked elevator next to the public elevator. He checked our guest ID card then opened the elevator door,and pushed the button to Sen. Smith's office. Upon arrival he escorted us  to the office assistant where we were greeted, then asked to take a seat to wait for Sen. Smith's legislative aide. There was a small table with a Mr. Coffee machine and Styrofoam cups nearby. We sat there quite a while before a young man, maybe mid-twenties, approached. "Mr Rogers, Mr. Ramsay, I'm so-and-so, please follow me". He led us to an office looking out on the Hawthorne Bridge over the Willamette River. He stood behind his desk and asked us to take a seat across from his desk looking at the wall behind him adorned with pictures of Sen. Smith and his congressional colleagues. Sen. Smith was a member of a Republican quartet know for singing hymns and patriotic songs. He asked us if we had some requests for Sen. Smith. My Trainer explained our mission and listed some concerns that had been given us as talking points. Our host listened dutifully but said nothing. He took no notes, though we did leave him with the copy of our talking points. When our visit was over he called the escorting officer, stood as the officer led us out  then wished us a good day. I was not impressed with his diplomatic skills and said so as we got into my trainers car and set off for the Lloyd Center area for our appointment with Sen. Wyden's staff. He merely smiled. Sen Wydens office was a quaint brick office building on Wiedler St, maybe three stories tall. We parked in the lot and walked up the steps to the reception desk. We checked in, the receptionist punched a button and spoke into a handset, announcing us. "Heidi will be down in a minute. Can I get you a cup of coffee?" She served us our coffee in a paper coffee cup, reached into a small refer for some cream and set it next to the sugar. We sat, and before our coffee had cooled enough to drink, a woman in her 40's, dressed business casual with a silk blouse and loose slacks (it could have been rayon, but give me my fantasy). She greeted my trainer by his first name and asked about his family. He responded back then introduced me, revealing my new assignment. She greeted me by name and explained that my trainer and her had known each other for a while. "He's a good teacher, pay attention to him." She escorted us to an elevator then up to her office where she made us comfortable at a round kitchen table and checked if we wanted more coffee. In front of her was a fancy pen and an open notebook. The kind you used to find in a trendy stationary store.

     She started by asking me how my day was going, using my first name, "I remember my first day in Sen. Wyden's office," she said, "My head was spinning for weeks." She then picked up her notebook and pen. My trainer let me introduce our legislative wishlist. She sometimes engaged me with a question, or made supportive comments. We had maybe 15 minutes of her time but felt as if we'd been having cocktails at a bar for the afternoon. She escorted us to the first floor gave our parking ticket to the receptionist for validation. She turned to me and wished me well, shaking my hand. Then turned to my companion, she had used both our first names. Later, on the way to where I'd parked my car we discussed the difference in the two offices. I mentioned that I had not expected much from a Republican, but was delightfully surprised by the lack of formality at Sen. Widens office. "Yeah, I actually believe that they treated us no differently than they treat a major donor". 

     Dynamic tension demands that all the spokes pull with the same tension. If the tire hits a bump, they maintain their tension, pulling together on the circumference of the wheel. Our visits in the offices of our Senatorial delegation were a kind of tension. Sen. Smith's office was designed to play on our weaknesses as his party sees us. "How dare somebody representing unions and other liberal institutions show up in our office!" Sen. Wydens office was more welcoming to us putting us at ease and allowing us to feel that we were not in hostile surroundings. Now it may be that Sen Smiths office was just as cold to visitors of a more amenable intent, but I doubt it. It also might be that Sen Wydens staff were more hostile with visitors to the right of center, but I doubt it. In the case of Sen Wyden's office, the welcome was much practiced. By that i don't mean it as an artificial construct. 

     We were there fulfilling our political right to know our Senators and ask them to listen to our wishes. We were there hoping for some area where we could appeal to them for a favorable action.  In the case of Sen. Smith we were spokespersons on the other side of the wheel, which were not allowed to be of equal tension. They were not a servant of our people. In a wheel, that tension disparity means you will push your bike home or carry it. In the other case, the Wyden office, we were treated as if they, Sen Wydens staff, were servants of the people, our people, as well as more well-heeled people. Our talking points were requests, not demands. We were expecting some action from Sen Wyden, but we understood that he was a member of the minority party.

     I was taught that that was how our democracy works. I was under no illusion that both parties played by the same rules, I remember movies like Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the great Frank Capra movie. Later, in my 20s, i was reaquainted with it by friends who were fans of old movies. We had had a floor to political interactions between the parties after the Joe McCarthy era. There was a sense of comeraderie and respect for deportment. Yes we still had the Dixiecrats, but until Richard Nixon, neither party wanted their pictures taken with them. My sense of things is that that started to change toward the end of the eighties. The rightwing spoke wrenches had been working to tighten the spokes with baskets of corporate dollars since Nixons time, but it took a while to be noticed by most of us. By the time of the republican revolution of 1992, with such characters as Newt Gingerich and Tom "the hammer" Delay, the political dynamic exhibited more tension against the center-left. K-street lobbyists were told by Speaker Gingerich that they must hire aides from republican offices if they wished to get a hearing with the majority party. A tax activist by the name of Grover Norquist was giving weekly planning breakfasts, telling any who would listen that "bi-partisanship was the moral equivolent of daterape", and few it seemed were disputing it. The Reinhold Niebuhr quote, "democracy is a proximate way for solving intractable problems was not mentioned in the GOP until 2012 when both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama mentioned him in their presidential campaigns, we believed candidate Obama. By this time such wisdom had been scrubbed from Republican textbooks. It did not help that the president then was not just a Democrat, which means liberal, which means communist, but of a pigmentation many Republicans did not want to vote without multiple 

impediments. Republicans met on the day President Obama was inaugurated, to pledge that they would oppose any legislation favorable to the Whitehouse-their Whitehouse-with the black family living in it. We were fortunate for a couple years to have Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. By 2012 the republican gerrymandering had helped them successfully win the Speakership, and keep the Senate. Fortunately President Obama had won re-election in spite of the cruel trickery of the Republican party. Since that time we have seen the Republican playbook in all of it's racist and misogynist glory. During that time the evidence of unchecked fascism also showed itself. A fascism that can be confidently compared with the 14 features of Fascism as pointed out by Umberto Eco in 1995 (I urge you to Google them). This Republican party was the party that had nurtured the Teaparty. The party that brought Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Louie Gohmert and other wingnuts to become the majority of what by then was the majority party in both legislative houses. Even Bob Dole, who had headed the Senate Republicans in the 90s, and ran unsuccessfully for president was rudely treated by his party when he rose from his wheel chair, supported by his wife Libby, and begged them to approve progressive changes to the Citizens for Discibility Act, an act Sen. Dole had written. This was 2013, a few years before the stink of Trump and four years before a $2 trillion taxcut for the very wealthy was passed with little regard for the debt ceiling, which was their excuse for opposing any spending bills President Obama supported.

     The Democratic party gets blamed for many faults. Sometimes with good reason. But they have not in my lifetime sought to protect those Democrats who have crossed some line of propriety. Yes, they waited until the investigations were completed, even for those of the other side of the chamber, but justice was done justly. There are rules of deportment and I have seen few instances of the Democratic party blowing them up. 

     On the other hand the Republican party has had some notable villains. Sen. Joe McCarthy was a little before my political consciousness, but within the time when I would learn of him in Civics classes. Richard Nixon was the first villain of my coming of age. An age that changed from the voting age of 21, to 18. Nixon brought other villains with him, he made the Dixiecrats Republican, and of course brought the Republican underworld into the Whitehouse. Roger Stone and the Whitehouse Plumbers among them. He also began the age of Republican influencers sponsored by the Koch Brothers and other wealthy donors. Donors who, at the time had spending limits on their participation, spending limits that you could drive a truck through, but limits nonetheless. The Federalist Society, a Koch group, was able to get justices on the Supreme Court to change the laws on corporate personhood, and later Citizens United, which opened politics, and the Supreme Court to open bribery. It took a half century, and we Democrats kept playing by the rules we had traditionally considered as fair and impartial.  Until the Reagan years, there were still Republicans who could be counted on as defenders of small d democracy. Those Republicans started to be replaced by politicians who would do or say anything to win. Willy Horton, Gary Hart, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, and others entered our political lexicon. And the Governor of Florida used the Brooks Brothers group, including John Robert's, to stop the recount of a close presidential election so his brother could win the presidency by virtue of the Electoral College. Subsequently, John Robert's became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 

     There is no longer the dynamic tension necessary for the democracy Rheinhard Niebuhr lectured us on. We now have one party willing to do anything to win, and a Supreme Court subject to the bribery of wealthy Republicans. It will take decades to get back to the practice of legislating based on comity and rules of deportment. That would require one party to admit that they have been at fault, and one party to remain patient with their colleagues from across the aisle. As if that will ever happen.