Julie Abbot Murphy still remembers the thrill she felt when she moved from Georgia to work on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Last Wednesday, she watched as the building where she worked for years was overtaken by insurrectionists. She reflects on democracy, her abiding love for Congress, and where our nation can go from here.
By Julie Abbot Murphy
It was January 1984. My younger brothers and I had driven from our home in Louisville, Georgia, to Washington, D.C., where I was to start an internship on Capitol Hill for U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. They deposited me on a cold, bright day near the Hart Senate Office Building and headed back to their northeastern colleges.
I quickly dropped my suitcase in my tiny dorm-like room and headed out. Fans of the Washington Football Team were coursing through the streets of the Hill in anticipation of a Super Bowl appearance. I walked from the U.S. Capitol to the National Gallery of Art, taking in the vistas, the brisk air adding to my sense of awe and promise.
A political nerd from a young age, I felt a thrill that only a few occasions in my life have since rivaled. It was a kind of homecoming for me, a chance to be proximate to the glorious sausage-making of public policy. The cheers of the rollicking football fans echoed as I made my way back up Constitution Avenue in the dwindling light. I was home.
I can’t remember what led to my fascination with Congress and with politics writ large but it emerged early. In 1968, when I was 10, I began writing to elected officials to request autographed pictures. I still have many of them: Former President Richard Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew, and, because I was a Georgia kid, Senators Richard Russell Jr. and Herman Talmadge, and Governors Lester Maddox and Jimmy Carter. My father, a beleaguered, progressive-minded country lawyer, perhaps in an effort to signal to his earnest little girl that the political world is wide, suggested I add Senators Ted Kennedy and Mark Hatfield.
Three years later, in 1987, I was fortunate to get a full-time job with Senator Nunn. From the Dirksen Senate Office Building, I could see the U.S. Capitol, and, like thousands of Congressional staffers over the decades of our democracy, I spent countless hours going back and forth between these two buildings, briefing my boss as we walked, shepherding awe-struck and, yes, sometimes, angry constituents.
Soon after I became a Hill staffer, Democrats took control of the Senate, and my boss assumed the chairmanship of a powerful committee. The president was a Republican. The two branches of the U.S. government, as they always have, as they were designed to do, checked and balanced each other in dramatic ways: both former Senator John Tower’s Secretary of Defense and Judge Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nominations were defeated; and the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 was enacted and then rescinded after fierce opposition.
Most significantly, in 1991, Congress debated and voted on the use of force against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. It was the first time since the Vietnam War that Congress had formerly exercised its Constitutional responsibility to declare war. Days of solemn and intense debate occupied both houses of Congress. As the Washington Post reported, “visibly conscious of that weighty constitutional obligation, somber lawmakers in both chambers sat in almost reverent silence … as they concluded debate and cast what many said were the most troubling and important votes of their careers.”
It was an international crisis that led to that moment of reverence and duty in 1991. A declaration of war. Thirty years later, however, in the dark night of last Wednesday, it was a domestic nightmare that brought senators and representatives together in their respective chambers. Amid broken glass and shattered norms of civility and dissent, they voted to certify a presidential election only hours after their very lives were in peril.
I awoke last Wednesday morning in great anticipation of the election results in my home state. While I have lived in the D.C. area for most of those years since 1984, I retain a keen interest in Peach State politics. Before my first cup of coffee, friends and family were sharing the grand news of the Rev. Raphael Warnock’s victory. I spent the morning querying my brother in Atlanta and my sister in Savannah about the other race between David Perdue and Jon Ossoff.
At 1 p.m., I was having my weekly Zoom call with my great nephew who lives with his father, mother, and little brother on Capitol Hill. We were chatting about Pokémon when suddenly his mother appeared on my screen: his brother’s daycare center was closing because of events unfolding at the Capitol a few blocks away. Our call ended abruptly. Like many Americans, I watched in horror and disbelief for the next four hours as the Capitol was violated, as the lives of hundreds of fellow Americans were put in jeopardy. As of this writing, we know that four people in the mob died that day. We also lost two Capitol Police officers who were on duty that day, Brian D. Sicknick from injuries and Howard Liebengood from suicide.
I am heartbroken. You can tour the rotunda, but you can’t desecrate it. You can threaten to withhold your vote from your elected officials, but you can’t threaten to hang them. You don’t get to lie your way to political dominance.
I loved and still love the U.S. Congress. I realize this must sound peculiar and wrong; I am not blind to the fact that many find those 535 individuals infuriating and hapless on a good day. For me, though, it is not about the members of Congress, it is about what they do when someone asks, “People are hungry, what are you going to do about that?” and every other legitimate concern brought before them since 1789. Listen to the facts, problem solve, find solutions, consider all sides, be open to compromise, debate, vote.
Three decades ago, I chose to work for a public servant because, for me, that is where a measure of hope for progress lies. Progress lies in process, democratic process.
Where is that hope today? It is two newly elected senators, one who grew up in public housing in Savannah and the other a Jewish son of an immigrant. Both are fellow Georgians coming to our nation’s capital to brave the fray of heated discourse as we navigate from the dark days of our 244-year-old collective history and of Jan. 6, 2021.
I think back to that January day in 1984 and how the sight of that iconic dome took my breath away. I remember the epic battles of my time as a Senate staffer and my pride in serving the people of Georgia as I fielded calls about taxes and the deficit, abortion, and health care. It was, and still is, messy and fraught and imperfect, but it is lady liberty who brought us to the dance of democracy. We have to stick by her.
I have a vision of all of us emerging from the unnatural disaster and destruction of Donald Trump’s presidency, blinking in the light of a new day, working at once to help those still under the rubble, and, together, starting the slow work of rebuilding our trust in each other as Americans.
There is actually a term used in Congress — regular order — that encompasses the long history of procedures and processes that has kept Congress functioning and ensures all voices are heard. There is also a budgetary bill sometimes called reconciliation.
Regular order and reconciliation. Not a bad place to start.
Julie Abbot Murphy was born and raised in Louisville, Georgia, attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received her master’s in public administration from the University of Georgia. She used that training both as a staffer in the U.S. Senate, as the director of a family homeless shelter, and in nonprofit advocacy, all in Washington, D.C.