Opinion: The dignity and decorum of the House

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Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) recently rejected C-SPAN’s request to use its own cameras to televise proceedings in the House chamber, saying the ‘dignity and decorum of the House of Representatives are best preserved’ by the current system. Under that system, which is controlled by the Speaker’s office, the cameras have been limited to two types of shots, both stationary: tight views of whoever happens to be speaking, or somewhat wider views of the middle of the chamber as votes are cast.
What Lamb wanted to show was what anyone in the visitor’s gallery might see: how members reacted and interacted during debates and votes. It was a perfectly reasonable request, and the Times’ editorial board endorsed it earlier this month. But Pelosi clung to the illusion that unrestricted cameras would somehow encourage less decorous behavior -- as if the House microphone didn’t already invite demagoguery? Has she already forgotten Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) calling Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) a coward? Or how about the debate over whether to give federal courts jurisdiction over the fate of Terri Schiavo? The list goes on and on and on....
To her credit, Pelosi threw C-SPAN a bone. Brian Lamb, C-SPAN’s chairman and CEO, had also asked for the ability to show individual members’ yeas and nays immediately after a vote ends. Pelosi said she had asked the Clerk of the House to determine if Lamb’s request could be granted without affecting the accuracy of the count. If the Clerk’s answer is ‘No’ -- and it’s hard to imagine how it could be -- the House needs to find a better system for recording votes. Beyond that, C-SPAN should be able to show what visitors in the gallery can see: an instantaneous display of how individual members vote and, in some cases, change their votes before the gavel comes down. Maybe that’s what Lamb plans to ask for next year. As members are overly fond of saying, this is the people’s House. And in the Information Age, the people shouldn’t have to travel all the way to Washington to see what their elected representatives are doing in the House chamber.