A Capitol Tour, Part VII - Will Rogers, the House Bank, and "Fartgate"
It’s too bad that Will Rogers’ statue can’t talk. He could solve the mystery surrounding one of our most recent “scandals,” using that term . . . loosely.
Will Rogers was America’s first stand-up comedian and Oklahoma’s most famous native son. Born in the Cherokee Nation of what was then Oklahoma Indian Territory in 1879 (Oklahoma became our 46th state in 1906), Wikipedia summarizes him well:
Rogers began his career as a performer on vaudeville. His rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that found general acclaim from a national audience with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."
Will Rogers died in a plane crash in northern Alaska with fellow Oklahoma aviation pioneer Wiley Post in 1935. But not before one of Rogers’ famous stand-up responses to a question from an audience member sealed his legacy. Some might say he was prophetic.
The story goes like this. Again, Wikipedia tells it well:
Before his death, the state of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of Rogers, to be displayed as one of the two it has in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the United States Capitol. Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so he could "keep an eye on Congress". Of the statues in this part of the Capitol, the Rogers sculpture is the only one facing the Chamber entrance—a stakeout location for camera crews looking to catch House members during and after voting. It is also a common background for reporters and lawmakers, with staff often directing the media to be at the “Will Rogers stakeout” at a certain time. According to some Capitol guides, each U.S. president rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House Chamber to give the State of the Union address.
Sure enough, you will find Rogers’ statue as we exit Statuary Hall toward the current US House chamber, just off to the right, looking at the entrance. His brass feet, rubbed by millions of Capitol visitors for good luck, explain their golden hue.
Every participant of every tour I’ve ever conducted makes a point of rubbing Rogers’ feet. I encourage it. Everyone wants good luck.
But if only Rogers could talk. He could definitively answer a question about one of our most recent “scandals,” fartgate.
I’m sure you remember the story. A C-SPAN camera and crew across from Rogers’ statue, again just outside the House chamber, feeds other networks. US Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) passionately responded to a question by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews when an unmistakable noise invaded the feed.
Matthews tried to take the blame for the unusual . . . outburst. But Rogers knows. If only he could talk.
Of course, this is a new part of my tour. American history often noisily, if humorously, invites itself. Swalwell, after an ignominious attempt at the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, was kicked off the House Intelligence Committee this month for being compromised over his alleged affair with a Communist Chinese spy. His California bay-area constituents continue to toot their unfailing support for the effervescent Swalwell.
Let’s move on.
Our next stop on my tour towards the Speaker’s Lobby at the rear of the House Chamber is the Rayburn Room, the House’s equivalent to the Senate’s Reception Room. Part of the 1961 east front expansion of the Capitol, its stately Walnut-paneled walls are centered by a large, life-like portrait of George Washington by an unknown painter previously hung at the US Embassy in Madrid, Spain.
I was first introduced to the Rayburn Room in early 1979 when I was asked to take several letters to Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt (R-AR), my first boss on Capitol Hill, for his signature. Hammerschmidt, elected in 1966, was the first Republican elected from Arkansas since reconstruction. We sat at the table beneath Washington’s watchful gaze. A leader on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the late Rep. Hammerschmidt has much of northwest Arkansas named after him. Deservedly so.
Hammerschmidt faced only one tough reelection during his two-plus decades in Congress. He was challenged in 1974 - the Watergate election - by a young University of Arkansas law professor named Bill Clinton. Hammerschmidt narrowly won, but Clinton was elected Attorney General two years later and, in 1978, as Governor. The rest is history.
In later years, I would escort constituents there during “stacked” roll call votes to meet with a future boss. Later, as a lobbyist, I would huddle in one of the corners with food industry colleagues to lobby for a particular bill. During roll call votes, this is a busy yet convenient place when votes are held every 5 minutes, both for lobbyists and constituents. The same is true for the Senate’s Reception Room.
Our next stop, at least when Congress is out of session, is past the House Sergeant at Arms Office. Again, I stop to explain another recent scandal.
The House Bank Scandal of 1992
During my early days on the Hill, the House Sergeant of Arms ran a bank for House members, with services available for staff. I loved to cash checks there because they always gave me brand-new bills in sequential order. After all, there was a mint just a mile away on 14th Street. It almost made you not want to spend them. They smelled and felt so. . . fresh. This was long before ATMs existed. You can still buy sheets of uncut dollar bills from the Mint, located next to the Holocaust museum and across the street from the Department of Agriculture.
We would all learn in the early 1990s that the House bank allowed Members of Congress to kite checks - they covered overdrafts. The bank encouraged - pressured - House members to keep accounts there, even though there was a US House Federal Credit Union with offices nearby. A handful of House GOP reformers - John Boehner, Rick Santorum, Jon Kyl, and others - exposed Dozens of House members for having checks that exceeded their available balances “covered” by the House bank. One Arkansas Democratic Congressman, Tommy Robinson, had 996 kited checks. It was a genuinely bipartisan scandal, but Democrats had controlled Congress - and the bank - for decades.
The scandal resulted in the bank being closed and Republicans winning control of the House for the first time in 40 years during the 1994 elections. A few were convicted for wrongdoing.
After that brief interlude, we make a right turn to an area that very tragically became infamous on January 6th, 2021, when Capitol Policeman Michael Byrd shot an unarmed protester and Air Force veteran, Ashley Babbit, when she tried to force her way into Speaker’s Lobby through a broken window as part of the Capitol riot that horrific day. I will never enter that doorway the same, ever again.
During my tours, I show my Senate ID to Capitol Police and peaceably escort my tours without breaking any windows onto the House floor. I direct my visitors to sit in the front row in seats used by Supreme Court justices and US Senators during joint sessions of Congress.
When I had the great honor of giving my grandfather a tour of the House chamber in the late 1980s, I was thrilled to invite him to sit in the Speaker’s chair. Quite an experience for a Depression-era oil field worker from Oklahoma with an eighth-grade education making his first trip on an airplane to the nation’s capital. That probably is not allowed today. But I might try for a future tour. Don’t tell Speaker McCarthy.
Besides the Rotunda, the House Chamber is the largest room in the US Capitol. It is designed not just to hold the 447 voting and non-voting Members of the US House but also the US Senate, Justices of the Supreme Court, the “Diplomatic Corps,” and Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others.
Unlike the Senate, there are no assigned seats. Republicans gather stage left, Democrats stage right, but there are occasional and welcome breaches. Like the Senate, the Speaker’s chair is the highest point of the chamber. When the House convenes, the Sergeant at Arms carries in the Mace, the symbol of the House’s authority, and places it to the Speaker’s right. It occasionally, but not recently, gets pulled out of its holding place and is thrust into the faces of Members who are about to violate decorum by engaging in fisticuffs.
After pointing out who sits where during joint sessions, I note the voting machines behind seats located along the aisles. House members are given a voting card inserted into a slot upon being sworn in - the world’s most expensive credit card. The Member then records his or her vote - aye, nay, or present - shown on the fabric screen at the rear of the chamber. Members are strictly forbidden to share their card with a colleague to vote on their behalf (but don’t get me started on Covid-era “proxy voting,” which fortunately has ended).
The House first assembled here in 1857, three years before the Senate moved into their new (and current) chamber. So much has happened here, from Union troops being quartered to a 1954 shooting during a roll call vote involving Puerto Rican nationalists. The House Historical Office tells the story:
On March 1, 1954, while Members gathered on the House Floor for an upcoming vote, three men and one woman entered the visitor’s gallery above the chamber and quietly took their seats. All four belonged to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and only hours earlier had traveled from New York City to Washington, DC.
The United States had annexed Puerto Rico in 1898, and the island’s relationship with the federal government had long been a point of contention. Some Puerto Ricans sought to maintain their relationship with the mainland, and others, like the four visitors in the House that day, argued for an independent Puerto Rico.
The Capitol had few security protocols at the time, and the four Puerto Rican nationalists entered the gallery armed with handguns. Around 2:30 p.m. they indiscriminately opened fire onto the House Floor and unfurled a Puerto Rican flag in a violent act of protest meant to draw attention to their demand for Puerto Rico’s immediate independence.
Five Congressmen were wounded in the shooting.
Members, House Pages, and police officers quickly helped detain three of the assailants outside the gallery, while the fourth escaped the Capitol and was apprehended later that afternoon.
Bullet marks can still be found on desks and walls. While several House members were injured, none were killed. President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of the attackers, short of the pardon President Clinton granted to Susan Rosenberg, who helped plant a bomb that exploded near the Senate chamber in 1983.
The House, like the Senate, features visitors galleries on three sides; the “fourth” side is reserved for the fourth estate, the media. As with the Senate, any visit to the gallery requires you to surrender any electronic devices, purses, briefcases, backpacks, or anything you might want to carry into the chamber. Other than some quiet whispering from your tour guide about what is transpiring (if anything) on the floor is required.
I finish my House chamber tour by pointing out the 23 relief portrait plaques of lawgivers surrounding the chamber, from Moses to Justinian to Jefferson.
In our next stop, we visit the spot where reporter Charles Kincaid shot and killed a former Congressman-turned-lobbyist, William Taulby, and traverse the Capitol’s historic first floor and crypt. It includes a special visit to what was to be George Washington’s tomb. He had other plans.
This is narrative history at its best. Bravo!
William A. Hamilton, Ph.D.