For the 94 newly elected Members of the House of Representatives — nearly one quarter of the chamber — their first week on the job will forever be marked by the attack on their three-term colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In that sense, the attack could hardly have been timed better to strike deep into the consciousness of the House.
From talking with House aides over the last 18 hours, the detail of the attack that resonates most with Members and their staffs is where it occurred: a constituent meeting back home in her district. Those constituent outreach efforts are the bread and butter of what Members do when not in Washington. Everyone does them. All the time. It’s part of their duty has representatives of the people.
So each Member and staffer can put themselves in the shoes of Giffords and her aides who were in the line of fire Saturday morning in Tucson. It’s not easy to put psychological distance between yourself and the victim when the circumstances of the attack are so ordinary, so easily identified with, so similar to events you’ve had yourself dozens or hundreds of times.
What people on the Hill have trouble understanding is, why now?
Beginning in August 2009, when the tea party movement began disrupting congressional town halls in districts across the country, Democratic Members suddenly faced a general vitriol — but also a series of specific violent threats — that none of them had encountered before. Despite Republican claims that Democrats were milking the threats and exaggerating them for political gain, the threats were deeply troubling to Democrats privately. They were forced to rethink holding town halls and to recalibrate the risks associated with being a public official.
But things had calmed down for the most part since the passage of health care in the first part of 2010. As the 2010 midterm campaigns heated up, the political tenor grew sharply more volatile again, although not to the extent it had been (unless, perhaps, you were Muslim). If an attack on a Member, especially a Democratic Member, had happened during the heat of the health care reform debate or the run up to the elections, no one would have been shocked. But the heat of the moment seemed to have dissipated.
As one aide said to me last night, if you were trying to make a statement, booting out the Democratic majority in the House was pretty powerful: Message sent and received. For the attack to happen now blindsided everyone.
Members don’t have security details unless they’re in the leadership. They are more accessible — and more vulnerable — than most people probably realize. For these 94 freshman, their initial experience as Members will be one forged in a crucible that I suspect will color their views of themselves and their jobs for the entire time they serve in Congress.
