Maryland voters deserve more than a candidate who wears their team colors.
A job interview can tell you a lot about a candidate. So can the moment a congressman discovers that a student journalist has a question he doesn’t want to answer.
After a recent candidate forum in Cambridge, Republican Rep. Andy Harris clashed with Cat Murphy, a University of Maryland graduate student reporting for Capital News Service. He objected to her recording him, invoked Maryland’s wiretapping law, threatened prosecution and called for police. The law, which applies to private conversations, did not prohibit recording the public press encounter, according to legal experts quoted in news reports. Harris subsequently declined to apologize.
I don’t propose to judge a man’s entire life by a single encounter. But I do propose that we judge the encounter.
A student journalist asking questions is not an invading army. A camera is not a weapon of mass destruction. And an uncomfortable question is not a constitutional crisis.
Public officials occasionally lose their tempers. They’re human. So are the rest of us. The question is what happens next. Do they acknowledge a mistake and try to do better? Or double down and expect us to confuse bluster with strength?
If we treated Congress like a job, the advertisement might read:
Position: U.S. Representative.
Duties: Vote. Show up. Read things. Listen to constituents. Exercise judgment, especially when the cameras are rolling.
Requirements: Experience, competence, temperament and a record you can defend without changing the subject.
Preferred: Someone who can answer a difficult question without treating the questioner as the problem.
You’d think these were fairly modest requirements. But spend a little time reading the comments beneath a political article, and you’ll discover that nobody seems to be hiring.
Everybody is picking a jersey.
Some readers thrill to vote “Red!” Others are convinced the democratic socialists are coming for our guns, our taxes and possibly the Buick up on cinder blocks. Someone else has posted a farm-policy dissertation, complete with footnotes, in installments. The comment section’s answer to a Senate filibuster.
What you rarely see is anyone asking, “What qualifications would I look for in the person applying for this job?”
I learned at home that political disagreement need not turn the dinner table into a battlefield. My father was a Republican in the Eisenhower mold and a Marine. My mother was a Kennedy Democrat with a saucy New England edge.
One Thanksgiving, the family discussion turned to George Wallace. There was indigestion before anyone carved the bird.
Nobody stormed out. Nobody called anyone a fascist, communist or traitor. Somebody passed the gravy, perhaps a little more aggressively than necessary.
Maybe having the head of the household wielding the carving knife encouraged restraint.
Today, we’ve gone from disagreeing to subscribing, and from subscribing to believing that anyone who disagrees with us must be either stupid or evil.
If political tribalism were a 12-step program, the first meeting would begin: “Hi, my name is America, and I’m addicted to disagreement.”
“Hi, America.”
Then somebody in the back would complain the coffee was fluoridated. Somebody else would complain it wasn’t organic.
Meanwhile, most people I know are trying to pay the bills, fix the roof after the nor’easter and put dinner on the table. Have you seen the demand on our food banks? Those folks have enough to worry about without being told every election that the other side is coming for their guns, Medicare, children, taxes — and any day now, the toaster.
Nobody wants your toaster. It’s from 1987.
There are genuine disagreements about taxes, immigration, healthcare, education and government’s proper role. We ought to debate them vigorously. But none excuses a public official from basic standards of conduct.
Criticizing conduct is not condemning a person. It’s deciding whether the conduct meets the standard for the job. Accountability leaves room for improvement; it doesn’t require us to pretend nothing happened.
The same principle applies to governing. Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Bill Clinton presided over federal budget surpluses. You needn’t endorse every action of those presidents to recognize that the country is more complicated than a choice between saints and villains. Clean air and water don’t check your voter registration. Neither does a wheelchair ramp.
So read the record. Examine the judgment. Notice who answers questions and who seems to regard questions as an act of aggression. Vote for the person you’d actually hire, even if that person wears the other team’s colors.
Nobody is perfect. If perfection were required for public office, we’d have to close the Capitol and turn it into a very expensive museum.
The privilege of choosing our representatives is precious. We can disagree without hating. We can demand accountability without declaring someone irredeemable. And we can expect better without pretending that we ourselves are perfect.
When the next candidate comes asking for our vote, ask the question we should have asked all along:
Would I hire this person?
If the answer is no, perhaps the color of the jersey shouldn’t change our minds.
Although if anyone has a spare, I’m an “L.”
Keith Watts, from Tilghman Island in Talbot County, is a volunteer member of the Talbot County Short-Term Rental Review Board and a former chair of the board. He writes in his personal capacity.