FLOOR WAR.(The Talk of the Town)(Jean Schmidt, the Member of the House of Representatives)

A hoary tradition of the Congress of the United States, inherited from the Mother of Parliaments across the sea, is the maiden speech. The most recent such speech was delivered by Jean Schmidt, who, on September 6th, became the Member of the House of Representatives from the Second District of Ohio. After being sworn in, she was permitted to address her new colleagues for one minute. In happy contrast to the rancor that has marked our political life of late, her words were soothing:

Honorable people can certainly agree to disagree. However, here today I accept a second oath. I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character. It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate. Harsh words often lead to headlines, but walking this path is not a victimless crime. This great House pays the price. , So, at this moment, I begin my tenure in this Chamber, uncertain of what history will say of my tenure here.

It didn't take long for Congresswoman Schmidt to provide history with the only thing it is likely to say of her tenure. On November 18th, the House took up a one-line resolution, "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately." The resolution was a fake--a sham, a travesty--put up by the Republican leadership in order to blunt the force of a declaration made the day before by John P. Murtha, a seventy-three-year-old Democrat from the coal country around Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Again, Schmidt was given the floor for one minute. She used it to say that she had just received a call from a Marine reserve colonel. "He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course," she said, and then added, her voice rising, "He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." She kept talking, but the Democrats in the chamber had already erupted in full-throated fury, the presiding officer was shouting "The House will be in order!" and pounding his gavel, and the damage--to Schmidt, not to Murtha--was done.

Murtha's statement had condemned the Bush Administration's conduct of the war as "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," argued that the occupation was impeding progress in Iraq and putting the future of the American military at risk, and called for American troops to be redeployed as "a quick reaction force in the region." It was a cogent critique of the war, but its astounding impact was due mainly to who made it. Murtha spent thirty-seven years in the Marine Corps and the Marine Corps Reserve. He was awarded the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, and, in 1974, became the first Vietnam vet to be elected to Congress. The authoritative "Almanac of American Politics" describes him as "hawkish and patriotic," an old-fashioned pol who devotes himself to "protecting the Pentagon and the troops."

Schmidt explained a few days later that neither she nor her Marine friend--a Christianist-right state legislator who had helped her win a photo-finish race against an Iraq-war veteran named Paul Hackett, in a district that normally goes Republican by fifty points--had had any idea who Jack Murtha was. Apparently his dissent on the war was sufficient reason to call him a coward. Jean Schmidt is the backwardest of backbenchers, and fellow-Republicans, including the friend she had quoted, hastened to distance themselves from her miscalculation. What gave it resonance was that she was reflecting--in a fun-house mirror--the thuggish behavior of her nominal betters.

Within hours of Murtha's declaration, the White House press office accused him of advocating "surrender to the terrorists." This was consistent with a broader White House campaign, which President ...