Just a Symbol, but Just Right for the Nation

The special session of Congress held in Manhattan on Friday has been slapped around in the press.

It’s a frivolous exercise in showboating and speechmaking, some say.

But, in fact, it took a modicum of courage for members of Congress to go there.

In the era of suitcase nukes and mailable anthrax, it perhaps takes guts for Congress to assemble anywhere.

Of course, everyone in Manhattan--or Washington, D.C., or any other possible terrorist target--must now live with heightened risk. And yet by going to New York on the near-anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. legislators not only kept faith with recent tragedy, they also demonstrated that, in the future, American democracy could function, if it had to, outside of Washington.

That’s a sobering but necessary thought in the era of weapons of mass destruction.

So let the critics snipe. The senior Democrat in the Senate, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, did not make the trip, telling Reuters, “There is not anything I can do by going up there.”

The Hill newspaper--as in Capitol Hill--reported that New York’s congressional delegation was “trying to find events for members, such as a New York Yankees baseball game, museums and the U.S. Open tennis championship.”

Even the hometown newspaper editorialists, welcoming their out-of-town guests, could not resist noting the “ceremonial” and “largely symbolic” nature of the conclave.

Sometimes, of course, ceremony has its rightful place. Billy Collins, the poet laureate of the United States, read “The Names,” honoring the memory of the lost, from Ackerman to Ziminsky.

“So many names,” Collins said to a hushed chamber, “there is barely room on the walls of the heart.”

Such a reading in such a gathering can’t alleviate the grief of the grieving, but at least it’s a way of saying: We are with you. You are not alone in your sorrow.

And symbolism isn’t so bad.

At the House of Commons in London, a statue of Winston Churchill symbolizes his country’s finest-hour resolve to oppose Nazism, no matter what. The British prime minister is depicted standing amid the rubble of that bomb-damaged structure, just as he did in the heroic autumn of 1940.

And so Congress going to New York is a signal, as well as a symbol--that Americans are not afraid, indeed, that the nation’s most treasured democratic institutions are fully functional, even during times of war.

But as inspiring as Churchill’s stand-fast example might be, guts are no substitute for a good plan. That came clear to Rep. Robert Andrews on the morning of Sept. 11. The six-term Democrat heard the news of the airplane attacks while commuting into D.C. from his New Jersey district. Arriving at the train station, he was greeted by chaos: “no emergency procedures, no evacuation system.” Prevented by fretful guards from going to his office, he watched the terrible events of that day unfold from a Capitol Hill police station.

Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, was similarly troubled by the lack of a plan. His piece for the Roll Call newspaper last October, headlined “What if Congress Were Obliterated?,” got attention.

Among Ornstein’s concerns has been the absence of a nuclear-age system of presidential succession. If all of Washington were destroyed, he observed in a recent interview, there might not be a legal president of the United States.

“Let the president pick a half-dozen governors” as ultimate vice presidents, he suggested.

Ornstein has created a commission to study these issues further, even unveiling a Web site, www.continuityofgovernment.org, to stimulate a national debate.

Today, Andrews and all members of Congress have special phone numbers and e-mail addresses for use in an emergency. If the evacuation plan were to work, they would be whisked away to one of those “undisclosed locations” where Congress--what’s left of it, anyway--could reconvene. It would be nice, of course, if all Americans could be so carefully looked after.

Meanwhile, Andrews and hundreds of other legislators made the pilgrimage to Manhattan and to ground zero.

But is it symbolism?

“Sure, it’s symbolism,” Andrews answered. “It symbolizes our commitment to their memory, and to this country.”

He has a point.

And while Friday’s session in New York was uneventful, the next time Congress travels somewhere, it could be in the wake of an even bigger event.

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James P. Pinkerton writes a column for Newsday in New York.