The Spire

Tucker Scott ’26

Opinions Editor

The intention of an action and the effect of an action can often have greatly varying consequences. When the consequences of something, even if it is meant in good faith, turn out to be horrible, then there is no shame in saying you got something wrong and making a change. We should judge actions not just by their intentions but also by the real consequences that come with them. I speak of the decision to televise Congressional hearings, and how, despite the intention being to be more transparent, the actual consequence is that these hearings turn into, much like the rest of our government, a stage show where politicians compete to get their 15 minutes of fame by owning a witness or stumping a witness rather than doing their Constitutional duty of oversight.

Whenever there is a public hearing, is anything actually learned? Or does one political side yell at the witness and try to dunk on them, and the other side defends them with no real information being learned. Did anyone learn anything from the Kash Patel hearings? Or how about the RFK Jr. hearings? Or the Biden health hearings? Or were the takeaways democrats yelling and “owning” the witnesses and Republicans “owning” Democrats? When Robert Mueller was called during the first Trump administration, was anything new learned? Or was it just an excuse for democrats to rip Trump as a Russian agent and republicans to point out that democrats are hypocrites and liars?

This isn’t a solely partisan thing either. The exact same thing happened but in reverse during the Biden Administration. Whenever a Democratic witness got up, republicans would spend their time attacking them or the Biden administration, and democrats would spend their time on defense. In fact, it’s where we got the legendary meme of Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana reading gay porn on the floor of the senate. Or how about all the hearings under the Obama administration. Take, for example, the Benghazi investigation. Nothing was learned. It was just a chance for republicans to attack Hillary and democrats to defend Obama and set Hillary up for her 2016 run. It’s this stupid game that we play where we pretend anything being said actually matters. When in actuality it doesn’t. No new information is being revealed to the public. What’s even worse is that this game is being played at our expense. Frankly, it’s a waste of our time and our taxpayer dollars. 

I understand the original purpose of airing congressional hearings was to be more transparent and allow any American to see the workings of Congress. But this isn’t the 1980s. Everyone knows how to use the internet. I understand the average age of politicians is older than Methuzila, and they don’t know what the interwebs are. But those of us who were born after 1776 know how to use the internet. If we want to know what a witness or congressman said in a hearing, we can just use Google. Plus, every major news station will also have reporters scouring and reporting every word spoken anyway. So for the six people who find congressional hearings fascinating, they can easily access the transcript and read it to their heart’s content. If the hearings are no longer televised, Congressmen have no incentive to grandstand and will be forced to ask actual questions, receive genuine answers, and shape policy around that. Instead of just having it devolve into a partisan shouting match as it so often does on Capitol Hill. 

These hearings have become grandstanding nonsense of the highest order. Nothing gets done, no information is uncovered, and everyone looks terrible and stupid. All having the cameras on is allowing politicians to yap and signal to their donors that they are doing the thing they were sent to Congress to do by either yelling at or defending a witness, depending on their political affiliations. What’s so frustrating is that there are all real questions that these witnesses, of both parties, should be forced to answer. It is the job of Congress to get those answers and provide oversight. But in its current form, congressmen are more interested in their 15 minutes of fame rather than serving their constituents and the citizens of the United States. Which is exactly why we need to stop televising congressional hearings.

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