What a strange game of pretend our politics can be.
Nowhere more so these days than in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can put Sen. Elizabeth Warren in time out for offending her colleagues' delicate ears by reading from a letter critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions' record on voting rights back when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama.
Never mind that Sessions' record on civil rights is precisely the proper focus of whether senators ought to confirm him as the next attorney general. Many believe _ I believe _ that he has, on that score, failed miserably and ought not be confirmed.
But rather than debate that proposition, and refute that negative reading of his record, his Senate champions would rather play their role in a charade. They preserve the decorum of the Senate even as they most indecorously silence one of their own.
It's a small moment, but a telling one, and if Sessions is confirmed it will attach itself to his confirmation like a blister of illegitimacy.
The offending letter had long ago been entered into the record of the Senate itself, having been part of the testimony that eventually led the Republican-led Senate to reject Sessions' nomination as a federal judge in 1986. And it was written by Coretta Scott King, the widow of the murdered civil rights icon.
Are we not offended that her language cannot be heard in the Senate? On such a pertinent point and at such a timely moment? We ought to be.
As Warren was reading from King's letter, the presiding officer intoned, "the Senator will take her seat" and soon enough, that was that. By a vote of 49-43, the Senate upheld the rebuke. Now Warren is barred from speaking during the remaining hours of the debate over whether to confirm Sessions.
How bizarre. When a senator is nominated to be the attorney general, his or her record on civil rights is extravagantly germane to the discussion of whether he ought to be allowed to take that office. And when the Senate's own record includes testimony from a voice as vital as that of Mrs. King's? Well, to silence that voice is to allow the rules to triumph over reason.
It is to pass off extreme indecorousness as the maintain of decorum. In other words, it's a sham.
McConnell objected because Warren had "impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama." He continued: "She said Sen. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens."
Good for her, but she wasn't the first to say so. Warren was quoting directly from the two-paragraph letter King had sent to the Senate judiciary committee in 1986, before it voted to reject the 39-year-old Sessions as a federal judge. That determination was based, in large part, on concerns that King and many others had raised about his commitment to civil rights.
There was a time in this country when Senate Republicans tended to be the good guys on the issue of civil rights. That was a very long time ago indeed.
Sessions is a bad choice for attorney general, in my mind the most dangerous pick of all the picks President Donald Trump has made for his cabinet.
The senators who feel otherwise would pay him more respect, pay their constituents more respect, if there weren't so afraid of arguments against him.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Michael A. Lindenberger is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Readers may email him at mlindenberger@dallasnews.com.
