The Issa Rule: With all that Shit, There Must be a Pony!

“I want seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks," he said in 2010. I suspect he hasn't achieved quite those numbers.  But I'd say that Darrell ("our gremlins are different") Issa,  has done a spectacular job of establishing himself not merely as the richest member of the House but the one who gets the most, then perhaps the most visible and memorable, TV time.  Poor John Boehner, orange-faced and weepy, surely racks up more hours in his role as the most ineffectual House leader since Frederick Muhlenberg.  But Issa--a Google search for "Darrell Issa threatens" yields up some 1,410,000 hits;  "Darrell Issa warns," another 78,000; for comparison, "Darrell Issa promises" garners only a measly 43,000.   Here's a guy who, in his role as chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has surely kept the faith with all those whose primary goal is to assure that the executive branch accomplishes nothing, zero, bupkas, nada, zilch--or at least not until it  is wrested away from the foreign-born interloper and returned to the good, grey reactionaries to whom it properly belongs.

All this is a a shame but in more ways than one.  That is: aside from mere partisanship, the government needs oversight, and needs a proper  oversight.   We've had spectacular instances of Congress in its oversight role.  Perhaps  none is more famous than the teamwork of Sam Ervin, Howard ("What did he know and when did he know it?") Baker and others who carried us through the Watergate crisis without losing their dignity and without destroying the national fabric.    We've had legislators who used the investigative power to build honorable careers--perhaps none more  notable than Senator Harry S Truman, the man from Pendergast,  whose work investigating war contractors did so much to overcome his (undeserved) reputation as a machine hack. We've even had investigations that turned on themselves, as when Joe McCarthy set out to destroy the Army and wound up destroying himself ("Have you no sense of decency, sir?").

And to keep matters in focus, we badly need some good investigation now.  The notorious Benghazi debacle, for example: whatever you think of the politics, it was an unambiguous operational failure and we absolutely need the best possible job of reassessment, as in "what went wrong and why?"  But it seems that all we've had so far is grandstanding, name-calling, and the unceasing search for an easy hit.

That is: aside from one what we sometimes get and badly need, we've also had far too many clown shows that end up discrediting not only themselves but the entire legislative process (I know--as if it could be any more discredited than it already is).  And I admit, I don't know, perhaps it is too early to tell.  Maybe Issa's hounding of the ATF, of Obamacare, of Benghazi, of  the CIA, of the SEC, of the Army, of the Attorney General, and now the IRS--maybe somewhere out there somebody will come up with some insights for sensible reform.  

Yeh, and maybe pigs will fly,   But in the interim, here's one more investigation that I'd love to see.  Can we have an inspector general, please, to give us a look at the record of the Issa committee?  How much has that guy cost us since he got his hands on the gavel?   And what, exactly, has he accomplished?  If we're looking for government fraud, waste, and abuse, would it make sense to start right here?