"We know they are doing their job in committee, that they are brilliant men, smart men, and that they are on the job all the time. We're just human beings down here-all different. We take all these things into consideration. You can't help it"
About this Quote
Deference is doing heavy lifting here, and it’s not accidental. McCormack wraps a defense of congressional power in the language of humility: “brilliant men” “on the job all the time.” It’s praise that functions like a procedural shield. By elevating “committee” work - the least telegenic, most easily mocked part of legislating - he’s insisting that expertise lives in the unglamorous machinery, not in the crowd’s impatience for clear villains and quick fixes.
The sly pivot is “We’re just human beings down here.” McCormack sets up a vertical geography: the committees above, the messy public below. That “down here” isn’t self-deprecation so much as a diagnosis of democracy’s emotional weather. People are “all different,” buffeted by competing loyalties, fears, and distractions; they “take all these things into consideration” whether or not it’s rational. “You can’t help it” is a shrug that doubles as a warning: public opinion will always be inconsistent, and governing institutions exist partly to absorb that inconsistency without breaking.
Context matters. McCormack, a longtime House power broker who rose to Speaker, came out of an era when seniority, committee chairs, and backroom bargaining were the operating system of Congress. His line reads like an argument against reformers and cynics at once: trust the process, even if it looks opaque, because the alternative is policy made at the speed of outrage. The intent is conservative in the small-c sense: protect the institution by recasting bureaucracy as civic ballast.
The sly pivot is “We’re just human beings down here.” McCormack sets up a vertical geography: the committees above, the messy public below. That “down here” isn’t self-deprecation so much as a diagnosis of democracy’s emotional weather. People are “all different,” buffeted by competing loyalties, fears, and distractions; they “take all these things into consideration” whether or not it’s rational. “You can’t help it” is a shrug that doubles as a warning: public opinion will always be inconsistent, and governing institutions exist partly to absorb that inconsistency without breaking.
Context matters. McCormack, a longtime House power broker who rose to Speaker, came out of an era when seniority, committee chairs, and backroom bargaining were the operating system of Congress. His line reads like an argument against reformers and cynics at once: trust the process, even if it looks opaque, because the alternative is policy made at the speed of outrage. The intent is conservative in the small-c sense: protect the institution by recasting bureaucracy as civic ballast.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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