In honor of John Fetterman, it’s always casual dress day in the U.S. Senate
Growing up, I was taught that the United States Senate was the world’s greatest deliberative body. The one hundred people assembled there would debate issues and make laws for the most powerful country in the history of the world. It was a place of gravitas because its work had grave consequences at home and abroad. Given the Senate’s recent drift left, it’s still consequential, although gravitas is lacking. Nothing illustrates that more than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s order allowing people to show up in the Senate Chamber wearing casual clothes. This is a big step toward making our constitutional Senate irrelevant.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) quietly has directed the Senate's Sergeant at Arms to no longer enforce the chamber's informal dress code for its members, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The new directive will allow Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who tends to favor gym shorts and hoodies over the business attire traditionally required in the chamber, to linger on the Senate floor before and after votes.
Of course, because this new edict comes from the left, discrimination is baked into the cake:
The updated rule will go into effect this week, according to a Senate official. The change applies only to senators — staff members will still be required to follow the old dress code.
Typical leftism: Rules for thee but not for me, right?
Image: Fetterman shows up in shorts and a hoodie. YouTube screen grab.
I’m a casual kind of person. Given the chance, I never dress up. But I also decided that, if I wanted comfort to be my primary concern, I wasn’t the kind of person who should work in a traditional office. I then shaped my career around my preferred workplace (comfortable clothes, flexible hours, children, and dogs).
What I did is a fine personal choice, and I have no regrets about the career decisions I made. But John Fetterman chose to go to the heart of the American government. He volunteered and fought for the right to work in a 230-year-old institution with long-standing traditions and incredible power. Now, though, as Monica Showalter said to me, we’re seeing “slobbery institutionalized: the Fettermanization of the Senate.” Or, less colorfully, we’re seeing the Senate downgraded.
As Americans are discovering, there are only two ways for societal institutions to function: The first and best way is for people to believe in those institutions. The Constitution is a piece of paper with a set of rules. Once one side decides to cheat and the other side walks away from the game in disgust, the game is over. Unless we swiftly return America to a country that believes in the Constitution, the rules for liberty-based governance that it contains will swiftly fall by the wayside.
The other way for societal institutions to function is through brute force. Even if nobody respects the government, if it has all the guns and is aiming them at the people, it gets to enforce its rules without the people having any faith in the institution.
Conservatives want the first system. Democrats want the second system. If they downgrade faith in the system, they are effectively breaking it. If they’ve simultaneously disarmed the citizenry, they will have achieved totalitarianism without the messy bother of a French, Russian, or Chinese revolution.
That’s why it matters that Chuck Schumer has changed the rules to accommodate a man who, even before his stroke, was marginally intelligent and functional. This is a deliberate thumb in the eye of the American people, made worse by the fact that the rules are applied unevenly, with the masters as slobs while the servants (i.e., the staffers) must dress up.
Seeing this type of fundamental unfairness in a legislature that, ideally, is predicated on equality makes a powerful point: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Right now, only the staffers are expressly less equal (although the reality is that these 20-somethings effectively run Congress), but soon it will be you getting that message, too.
Conservatives recognize what’s happening, and they aren’t happy:
Schumer proves once again he is an absolutely horrible Majority Leader. What a disgrace and disrespect to the institution. Get dressed for work people, it’s not that hard. https://t.co/grrVGogDTF
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) September 18, 2023
The senator from Pennsylvania is so incapacitated that his colleagues changed Senate rules rather than even attempt to have him dress like an adult. https://t.co/vVJwNg1DOw
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) September 17, 2023
The Senate will no longer enforce its dress code, all because John Fetterman is a revolting slob.
— Monica Crowley (@MonicaCrowley) September 17, 2023
This is a material debasement of a storied institution
and an absolute reflection of America’s steep decline.
The Senate no longer enforcing a dress code for Senators to appease Fetterman is disgraceful.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeneрџ‡єрџ‡ё (@RepMTG) September 17, 2023
Dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions.
Stop lowering the bar!