Daily Herald opinion: Rush to start congressional probes offers only more promise of politics over government

So, is this the future we have to look forward to for governance in our country?

At one time, an event like the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 1950s seemed so grand and momentous that it riveted the nation to its TV screens. It would be nearly 20 years before the Watergate hearings provided a similar national spectacle. A decade later came the Iran-Contra hearings, and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton a decade and a half after that.

Then over the course of the next dozen years, three separate partisan hearings into Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, followed closely by congressional investigations of a supreme court nominee, two presidential impeachments and a Capitol insurrection.

Now, with the gavel barely warming the palm of a newly - and roughly - minted speaker, the House of Representatives has already announced broad investigations into, first, the supposed "weaponization" of federal agencies and, on Wednesday, the financial affairs of President Biden and his family.

These latest developments are not surprising, of course. Republicans have been licking their chops since before the November midterms at the prospect of getting their hands on the House's investigative machinery, and who's to say Congress shouldn't be doing all it can to root out and redress wrongdoing?

But still, one has to wonder at this increasingly common and suddenly urgent rush to create a forum for humiliating political enemies and scoring partisan points. As they take control of the House of Representatives, Republicans have a prime opportunity to demonstrate what's really involved in governing, to work differently to show Americans what solid, mature government really looks like. Instead, they seem bent more on simply adhering to a now-familiar playbook and somehow promising a different result that will lead to more confidence in our government.

The faults of a playbook that focuses more on partisan gamesmanship than true governing seem evident also in a more local context with the resignation this week of former Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, a Western Springs Republican. In an outgoing interview with Capitol News Illinois, Durkin lamented a "purity test" that he fears has become a standard for measuring a political leader's effectiveness.

Congressional investigations do not precisely equate with political purity tests, but the two concepts share an important similarity. They are more about politics than governing.

We, and we suspect much of the American public, are not encouraged by the prospect of coming months and perhaps years of political grandstanding, while critical, bipartisan work on issues like Social Security and Medicare stability, immigration reform, economic prosperity and more languishes in the background. We could be encouraged by a Republican House that steps up to say, "We are going to not just take government in a different direction but do it in a different way."

But, alas, the early signs are that we will see neither result.