Our analysis of the challenges the committee faces.
 | By Ezekiel Kweku Politics Editor, Opinion |
The committee hearings to probe the events of Jan. 6 began yesterday evening, but on what terms they can be successful seems to be an open question. We asked a number of analysts and thinkers to help us understand the challenge the committee faces. |
Norman Eisen and E. Danya Perry argue in an essay for Times Opinion that the committee will be successful only if it can convince the American people that the Jan. 6 insurrection was part of a wider conspiracy against American democracy, one that is still in progress and one that should mobilize American voters. In a separate essay, Garrett Graff argues that the committee can actually accomplish this goal by following the example of the Watergate committee, which sought not just to establish a narrative of a conspiracy, but also to assign moral responsibility for the crime in question. |
In the view of Jacob Bacharach, the hearings are likely to be unsuccessful on their own terms. Televised committee hearings, he argues, are made for a different political and media environment — the brief postwar era of shared reality. In the factional and partisan national politics we have now, he argues, the only kind of hearings that can have an impact are unabashedly political shows like the Benghazi hearings. |
And in David Brooks' view, the committee has already failed, because its goals are too small minded. The important facts of the riots of Jan. 6 happened in full view of the public, he argues. What is important is "the movement, not a conspiracy." The problem is "that there are millions of Americans who have three convictions: that the election was stolen, that violence is justified in order to rectify it and that the rules and norms that hold our society together don't matter." Whatever the outcome of the hearings, it's clear that the task is difficult, and the stakes are high. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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