Paul Kanjorski: On Constituent and Congressional Civility
Town meetings were great years ago.
I looked forward to them because we would have a great debate. It was really fun to engage. People were very courteous, very polite. But that started to change. I could almost put a date on it—1989. The Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., revolution against (former House speaker) Jim Wright, D-Texas, changed the whole tenor of politics in the country, here in Washington and even at home.
It got vicious about 1991, and some of us decided to suspend the town meetings. And I did for about six months. Constituents wanted to fight you. They’d want to fight each other—absolutely unbelievable.
