Did Gabrielle Giffords’s presence on the House floor yesterday, half a year after she was shot and almost killed, pull one back from the brink of cynicism? Or is it just a reminder of how much our political system has lost—a flower at a funeral? Maybe some of the colleagues crowded around her considered the moment an affirmation of the work they’ve been doing since she was gone. Many, undoubtedly, were simply glad because of their affection or admiration for her, and that is always enough. Is it ungenerous, at the same time, to hope that the sight of her made at least some of them ashamed? Giffords was there in case she was needed to get a bill through that would keep our country from defaulting on its debt. (Even more economic trouble, that is.) In a statement which, as the Arizona Republic notes, is “the first in her own voice since the mass shooting that killed six people and wounded 12 others besides her,” she said
She didn’t want anything lost because of the weakness of her own body. She came, though, to a chamber where too much had been given up or thrown away or sabotaged though the weakness of her colleagues—political, tactical, negotiating, and even, as John Cassidy notes, moral weakness. (The Tea Partiers’ carelessness about the country betrays a profound lack of strength, no matter how masked by stubbornness.) She is only just walking again, and she came ready to be the cavalry. She was like a princess visiting the scene of a disaster: welcome, a comfort, restorative, maybe even pointing a way forward, but entire blocks are already flattened. Or like Fortinbras, without an army. The global economy is not going to completely collapse because of Republican theatrics; that’s nice. But Giffords’s tidings of commitment and public service, courage, empathy and generosity, may have come too late for this cast of characters.
So how was she? Smiling, which was good; embraced, and embracing back. Her husband, Mark Kelly, an astronaut, was there. It was entirely beautiful, even if it was clear that she is not entirely better. “Coming to Washington to cast a vote that is absolutely critical to the country doesn’t change the fact that she still has work to do in her recovery,” C. J. Karamargin, her communications director, told the Republic, which also observed that she favored the left side of her body; the bullet went through the left side of her brain, and that is one of the effects. (She now writes with her left hand, rather than her right.) And from the Times:
Her colleagues probably needed some love, after such a bitter few weeks. And they may need it, and her, more and again, in the convoluted sequel that the bill they passed plotted out—a super-committee, a balanced-budget amendment vote, the threat of blind cuts, the ritualistic abdication in the “vote of disapproval” that seems all too likely, in a few months, to be sent to President Obama for a veto. And that is just the process: the results involve sacrificing our future to pay for the Bush tax cuts. This bill passed with more than a hundred votes to spare. What might one, more tenaciously fought for by the Democrats, in which hers truly was the deciding vote, have looked like? It’s at least worth asking. Nancy Pelosi talked about how Giffords “brings honor to this chamber.” She does, she did, and she will, even if she never fully returns. Is Congress also going to bring honor to her?
