I’ve been looking forward — with somewhat high hopes — to the 1/6 Committee making its presentation to the nation. Their presentation seems to me the best tool available for awakening the American electorate — prior to this November’s Midterm Elections — to the threat to American democracy posed by the Republican Party (which is judged likely soon to take control of Congress), and by Donald Trump (who is still judged most likely to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024).
My high hopes for their presentation — based on what that Committee has already said publicly (in court filings and otherwise) and on the high quality of the people involved — have been one of the casualties of the horrendous assault by Russia on free and democratic Ukraine.
My fear is that the Ukraine crisis will likely continue to squeeze almost everything else out of the news space. And as a result, the public hearings the 1/6 Committee will be orchestrating to educate the American public will attract only a fraction of the attention they would otherwise have received.
That remains a great concern: gaining public attention, which would in any event have always been something of a challenge, will almost certainly be a much greater challenge.
However, the Ukraine crisis may also present something of an opportunity for the Committee. Here’s how that’s true:
In an op/ed in the Washington Post this week, columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote, in the context of an argument that “the Ukraine war may have strong implications for American politics and support for democracy more generally”:
Biden has an opportunity to link U.S. support for democracy abroad with our devotion to democratic values and norms at home. Republicans’ authoritarian bent — condoning violence, supporting voter suppression and subversion — should be seen as a significant vulnerability. He needs to make a stronger connection between our example as the world’s leading democracy and our ability to rally the world against
I certainly agree about that being an opportunity for our Democratic President, who has handled the Ukraine crisis rather masterfully. I would love to see Biden speak with the same kind of righteous anger and moral resolve about the Republicans who are assaulting our precious constitutional order as he has brought to his denunciation of Putin and his thug-like and terroristic attack on his weaker neighbor. But taking on the Republicans in that appropriate spirit has long seemed to be Biden’s weak spot. (Indeed, on this site back in 2019, as I evaluated the various candidates, it was Biden’s weakness in calling out the Republicans that was the main reason he was not my first choice.)
However, that opportunity that Ms. Rubin points out can be taken up by others besides Biden. And specifically by the 1/6 Committee.
As that Committee conducts its hearings, there will doubtless be many times when a connection can be made between the battle between the Russian dictatorship and the Ukrainian democracy, and the way in which the events of January 6, and the whole effort leading up to it to overturn an election and seize power that the constitutional process had given to Trump’s opponent. The Committee should make the most of those opportunities.
The task facing that Committee — how to compose a presentation that would have maximal positive impact on the American electorate, in order to save our imperiled democracy — was always going to be a creative challenge of great complexity, and even greater importance.
To that task must now be added turning the Ukrainian crisis into a means of magnifying the importance of the picture the Committee will be presenting of the ongoing attack on our own democracy.