The Maine Idea: Tuning up for the greatest show of 2022 - pressherald.com

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As friends know, I have gone out of the political prediction business, for now.

The times through which we’re passing are too volatile, too uncertain, too bewildering for anyone to make out the electorate’s next move.

Which only means that current forecasts of the outcome next November, repeated ad nauseum, are based on nothing more than the assumption that recent history will keep repeating itself – decidedly not our experience during nearly two years of pandemic, and counting.

So take this as an observation, but one based on clues right in front of us: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol will produce the biggest show that Washington, and the nation, has seen since Iran-Contra in 1986, and perhaps since Watergate in 1973-74.

The ingredients are there, starting with the words of the principal participant.

What we mostly recall, after the interminable 187 minutes of mayhem, was a presidential video saying, “So go home. We love you. You are very special.”

But we neglect the opening: “We had an election that was stolen from us.” From that moment on, the “Stop the Steal” rallying cry – rather than the actual attempt to steal the election from the candidate who, clearly and unquestionably, won it – became the sole focus of the soon-to-be-former president, and the Republican Party he nominally heads.

Unlike that video, which apparently had to be re-shot several times so it contained the words “go home,” there was a much more formal presentation the following day, a clearly staff-written script.

It contained some telling phrases, along with unlikely ones. Does anyone really believe Donald Trump thought the attack was “heinous,” and that he was “outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem”?

Then he said: “I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders.”

Nothing the committee has released to date suggests that Trump took any “immediate” action concerning the National Guard, or any other official body.

The prelude to Jan. 6 was the Jan. 5 conclave at the Willard Hotel, where a “war room” of high-priced lawyers and political fixers was trying to save the day for Trump.

Few have pointed out the irony of meeting at the Willard, scene of many of the nation’s most historic events from the early 19th century onward.

It was in 1830 that the “Great Compromiser,” Henry Clay, introduced the mint julep to Washington. More substantively, in 1861 it hosted the now-forgotten “peace convention” that tried to avert the Civil War, then welcomed Abraham Lincoln during the 10 days before he was inaugurated president of a fractured nation.

By the 1960s, the Willard had fallen on hard times and was closed to the public for 18 years, but in 1986 it returned as a showplace, ready to make more history.

True, its room rate ($269) is still lower than the Trump International Hotel ($396), but it’s also closer to the White House, a long block up Pennsylvania Avenue.

And it was there that the conspirators considered the far-fetched, last-ditch efforts to keep Donald Trump president, perhaps involving a declaration of martial law, invoking the Insurrection Act, or whatever it was they finally settled on.

There was, at least, the recognition that once the Vice President certified the vote count the following day, it would be all over.

The main question, which we’ll be following over weeks of public hearings next year, will not be Howard Baker’s famous query about Richard Nixon, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Rather, we’ll consider, “What did the president do, and when did he do it?”

The answers will help produce the legal and constitutional conclusions we draw about January 6, and well as aiding the slow and subtle movements of public opinion, which is how we like to characterize the way the electorate ultimately makes up its mind.

Unfortunately, unlike Watergate, when a very young Bill Cohen shone on the House Judiciary Committee, and Iran-Contra, where both Maine senators – Cohen and George Mitchell – played prominent roles, Maine won’t have a seat at this Select Committee’s table.

But the House committee does seem to have capable hands. There are seven Democrats, and two Republicans – thanks to Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s unaccountable decision to scuttle an independent panel with equal representation last May.

After interviewing hundreds of witnesses, and getting most, if not all, of the written and filmed material it seeks, the committee will be ready.

As we used to say, “Let the show begin.”

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books. His first, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” is now out in paperback. He welcomes comment at [email protected]

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