Just when you think you've seen everything, Congress pushes back the Easter recess, comes back to Washington on a Sunday night, and delves headfirst, along with the president of the United States, into the short and tragic life of Terri Schiavo and her fractious kin.
And while a close reading of this case suggests that it is about many things (including politics, religion, modern medicine, aggressive weight loss, fertility treatments, medical malpractice awards, and deep moral and ideological beliefs), the moment Congress got involved, you suddenly realized that there are new, unknown depths of amazement yet to be plumbed in Washington.
House Majority Tom DeLay teared up as he talked about Terri's -- and he always called her Terri -- “parched” mouth and her “throbbing” hunger pangs. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist -- that is, Dr. Bill Frist -- said that, based on a (four-year-old) videotape he had seen, he was not sure if 15 years worth of legal and medical opinion asserting that Schiavo was in a “persistent vegetative state,” with almost no prospect of recovery or rehabilitation, was sufficiently reliable to allow the removal of her feeding tube. And it was on these wispy feelings and amorphous evidence that Congress set out to make law -- law, it must have been clear, that would have no practical effect in the Schiavo case. There was no lack of conviction or moral clarity.
“I say again: The legal and political issues may be complicated, but the moral ones are not,” DeLay insisted. “A young woman in Florida is being dehydrated and starved to death. For 58 long hours, her mouth has been parched and her hunger pangs have been throbbing. If we do not act, she will die of thirst. However helpless, Mr. Speaker, she is alive. She is still one of us. And this cannot stand.”
Pardon the cynical among us who could also discern a certain political byplay in the proceedings, an overture to the high-maintenance, Christian evangelical wing of the GOP, which is constantly looking for new fronts to wage the war on abortion and found one in the Schiavo case.
DeLay said Schiavo had “survived her Passion weekend,” and the speaker quoted the pope. What seemed most missing from the debate was a set of facts that all sides could agree on. For example, despite all the fact finding in the state courts to the contrary, the speaker of the House said on Sunday that Terri Schiavo was alive and conscious. He went to the floor on Sunday with a heavy heart. “We have heard very moving accounts of people close to Terri that she is, indeed, very much alive,” Speaker Dennis Hastert said. “She laughs, she cries, and she smiles with those around her. She is aware of her surroundings and is responsive to them. This is a woman who deserves a chance at life, and not a death sentence of starvation and dehydration.”
There was a surreal quality to the weekend, and not simply because it was shocking to watch the vast machinery of the federal government practically stop in its tracks and focus all of its attention on this small, sad, and tragic episode in the national narrative.
For the most part, the Democratic Party let Republicans run free on Schiavo's case, although a few House Democrats refused to hold their tongues. Indiana Democrat Julia Carson, in her own inimitable way, crystallized the mood of the opposition. “For the life of me,” she said, “I cannot understand why we are here. … My heart goes out to this family. I know this is a very dark season for them. I know justice will prevail and God will have the last answer. But Congress should not have the last answer because it is none of our business. This is called meddling.”
As the midnight hour approached Sunday, Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano just seemed pissed off. “The bottom line,” he said, “is I do not want you interfering with my wife and me. Leave us alone. Let us make our own decisions. It is not up to you. That has always been the way it has been in this country, and that is the way it should be. For six years I have been hearing how the nuclear family is all we care about. Now we do not. Stay out of my family. If you can do it here, you can do it to me. You can do it to every one of my constituents. Leave us alone. Let my nuclear family make my decisions -- and my wife's decisions -- without your input.”
Facts did seem not to matter, and in an odd way it reminded me of the ongoing Social Security debate, where, depending on whom you ask, the crisis in Social Security is 37 years away, 22 years away, or 13 years away. Some Republicans have said that the trouble begins three years from now, in 2008, when those first baby boomers, the class born in 1945, begin to retire. Then General Accounting Office says that with no changes, Social Security pays out undiminished benefits until 2042. But a 2008 time frame provides an urgency that you can't muster with the 2042 number.
There is no short selling the deep conviction on display in the Schiavo case, but there seemed little question about two things: first, that she could breathe on her own, and, second, that she was indeed in a persistent vegetative state. When the debate started in Congress, that was no longer the case.
Florida Republican Dave Weldon, who introduced the first bill trying to prevent Schiavo's feeding tube from being removed, has maligned Schiavo's husband, Michael, suggesting that he's abandoning her after receiving a million-dollar settlement in her case and that he ended therapy that would have improved the quality of her life. Others have suggested that Michael wants to get married again, and that killing his wife would therefore be a convenient necessity.
“Terri is not in a coma as I would define it, and I am a physician,” Weldon said. “She is not on a respirator or other 24-hour-a-day medical equipment. Terri is responsive to stimuli, such as voices, touch, and the presence of people. She can move her head and establish eye contact. Terri can smile, demonstrate facial expressions, and cry. She can arch her back and move away or toward voices and people. Terri makes sounds and attempts to vocalize as a way of communication.”
Heartbreaking if true. An abomination if not!
It seems as if the last place this debate will be resolved is in the statehouse in Tallahassee or in the halls of Congress. Just look at how Earl Blumenauer of Oregon got plain ol' ugly with the Republicans. “The hypocrisy of Tom DeLay and the Republican leadership in Congress is breathtaking,” he said. “The only time they trust the federal courts is when they are using them as a political tactic.”
Just when you thought you'd seen everything.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
