Should he tire of his day job, U.S. Representative Bruce Westerman of this state's Fourth District would make a heckuva guide around the national Capitol by night. He gave a group of Arkansans plus a few hangers-on quite a show the other night. Maybe because he realizes that history in its most appealing form is a series of compelling stories and personal anecdotes.
The lucky visitors passed through both House and Senate chambers and the vice president's office. They could look inside the lawmakers' desks or take in the view from the Speaker of the House's balcony. While they had the grace not to bang any gavels, they could sit back and relax in any of the legislators' comfortable chairs. All the while getting some tips from Congressman/Tour Guide Westerman about how best to position themselves if they wanted the television cameras to picture them shaking hands with the president of the United States as he comes down the aisle en route to delivering his State of the Union address.
"There's not assigned seating in the House," Congressman Westerman told the night visitors. "It's kind of first come, first served." And it's hot, what with all those folks under one dome while bumping elbows and against television lights.
As an extra added bonus, as the old cereal boxes used to say, these night visitors didn't have to suffer the slings and arrows of running for public office to enjoy a congressman's-eye-view of the legislative branch at work and play.
Bruce Westerman's tour takes a body through the imposing rotunda of the Capitol, and past the spot where statesmen who have given their last full measure of devotion lie in state as their admirers pay their last respects. Then the Westerman tour goes through Statuary Hall, the site of inaugural luncheons. But through it all, the congressman recites stories of the good and great in American history. He can point out just where John Quincy Adams suffered his lethal stroke years after moving up morally from the White House to Congress, where he refused to abide by a gag rule that attempted to stifle anti-slavery speeches. But he would not be gagged. Instead he would defy the Slave Power, speak out and be heard. And there's the desk used by another political and moral light by the name of Abraham Lincoln when he opposed the Mexican War as an act of aggression designed to bring more slave states into the Union.
In this place history leaves behind not just stories but physical evidence of its impact, often deadly. There's the bullet hole that mars one congressman's desk--a stark reminder of the attack by Puerto Rican terrorists on March 1, 1954, that left five members of Congress wounded. For the War on Terror isn't just a modern crusade and the Middle East isn't the only region of the world that spawns violence. In the Senate, the desk used by Jefferson Davis, president of the ill-fated Confederate States of America, still bears the traces of the bayonets used by Union soldiers when they scarred up the desk he'd used as a United States senator.
When it comes to historic rivalries, it would be hard to beat the feud between dour old John Adams and convivial slave-owner Thomas Jefferson. They are both pictured in Capitol rotunda art. In one painting, Mr. Jefferson is stepping on Mr. Adams' foot.
It was almost the next day (officially) before Bruce Westerman, congressman and impresario of this show, closed up shop and ushered all his guests out. Asked why he'd put put himself to all this trouble entertaining people he might not even know, he explained: "It's their Capitol, and it's just an honor to get to take people around and show it to them. A lot of people, this may be the only chance they get to come to D.C. I remember how I felt the first time I got to walk in here. It's neat for others to get to have that experience."
Word-of-mouth may be the best form advertising can take in this state or any other, especially when it's reprinted in Arkansas' Newspaper; just take it from Mike Hickman, who's a radiologist from Hot Springs: "This is one of the most amazing tours of a historic building I've ever been on. The living history, the people describing it, the traditions we have, being able to see where the laws of the country are made. It's all wonderful." And indeed it is.
Editorial on 06/03/2017