Nancy Mace

If you want to be a prominent member of Congress in this day and age, the surest path is to become a hype machine for the ideological extremes of your party. Yet Nancy Mace gives no signs of responding to these tabloid incentives in conversation with her constituents. It’s an odd thing to say about a politician in 2023, but you might even find yourself taking her seriously. In a Washington where the House of Representatives is dominated by GOP would-be pundits, including bomb-throwers such as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, the second-term Republican from South Carolina’s 1st district sounds like a politician from a different era.

With the make-up of Congress still taking shape after the midterms, perhaps the last thing anyone expected was any kind of bipartisanship. Yet despite a contentious campaign where rising crime featured prominently in attack ads, the first order of business in both the House and the Senate was a provocative move on marijuana. In the House, Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin and Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace cohosted a hearing on how state cannabis laws have developed and what reforms the federal government might yet undertake. The hearing was surprisingly friendly, save for an outburst from Texas congressman Pete Sessions who in a rambling monologue compared legalizing pot to profiting from slavery.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, Cockburn is deeply skeptical of progress. Barely a day goes by without the evidence contradicting the idea that we are emerging from the bad old days into a bright, enlightened future. Quite the opposite: all around him, Cockburn finds evidence that our forebears had it figured out in ways we have somehow forgotten. The latest reminder that everything is getting worse is the almighty row between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace. The two first-term Republican congresswomen have spent days insulting one another on Twitter and in interviews with unusual ferocity even by the standards of Washington in 2021.