Count me as perplexed. I couldn’t understand why Credo Mobile had issued a petition in support of having Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida serve as the sole Democrat on the House Select Benghazi Committee. So, I read the petition.
The request is straightforward:
We urge you to appoint Florida Representative Alan Grayson as the sole Democratic member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi, or appoint no one at all.
Approximately 20,000 people have signed this petition. But, why?
As I began reading the rationale, I saw that Credo Mobile correctly identified to problems with the committee. But I was looking for the logic behind Grayson being the sole Democratic member of the committee.
I never found that logic. I was told that Grayson is an accomplished litigant and that he excels at questioning witnesses and that he has a tough skin and doesn’t care what the right-wing media says about him. I was given examples where he has been effective in televised hearings. But I was also told the following:
With limited power, House Democrats cannot afford to cede this committee room to Republicans, who will use televise[d] hearings to parade their Benghazi myths unimpeded by any respect for facts, responsibilities to reach the truth and in a manner completely unhinged from reality.
Let’s accept that argument as true. The Democrats cannot afford to completely boycott the proceedings. Then why does the argument for Grayson conclude by asking me to “Join [Credo Mobile in] urging Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Representative Alan Grayson as the sole Democratic member of the Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi”? Why does the language of the petition asked Pelosi to appoint Grayson and Grayson alone, “or appoint no one at all”?
The premise of their argument is that the Democrats can’t afford to appoint no one at all. That’s off the table. But they make no effort to explain why Grayson should be the only appointee. If not Grayson, surely someone else rather than a situation the Democrats can’t afford. So, why just Grayson?
They don’t say.
They could have made an argument for this. Maybe appointing only one member would send a signal that the proceedings are a sham without totally ceding the floor to the Republicans. And maybe there is no one else besides Grayson who could do the job of standing up to Republicans on the committee. But I shouldn’t have to make Credo’s argument for them.
For me, Grayson is singularly ill-suited for this task. He is rightly seen as an intemperate firebrand, prone to over-the-top language. He’s a bomb-thrower who excels at warming the cockles of outraged liberals’ hearts, but the press looks askance at his antics. In his first term in Congress, he took no heed of the makeup of his district and neglected constituent services in favor of making headlines. He was totally destroyed in his reelection campaign.
Sending Grayson in to trade bombs with the Republicans on the Benghazi committee is basically an endorsement of bomb-throwing, which would give the committee’s tactics a legitimacy that they don’t deserve. He would also be outnumbered on the committee 7-to-1, which leads me to suspect that Credo is overestimating his skills and ability to come out the winner in a war of public perception.
Winning the war will require not just a strong performance in the hearings, which few people will watch, but a strong performance in the coverage of the hearings. Picking someone that the media respects would be a good start.
Personally, I am not prepared to accept the premise of this petition, which is that the Democrats must appoint at least one person to the committee. But I outright reject the idea that the Democrats should only appoint one person. And I doubly reject the idea that that one person should be Alan Grayson.
I don’t oppose Grayson serving on the committee along with four other Democrats, but I cannot support him serving as the only Democrat.