What Corrine Brown Should Have Said

Florida Representative Corrine Brown (D. Fla.) had her remarks striken from the record during a debate on whether federal officials should be forbidden from inviting international observers for the 2004 Presidential election. The disciplinary action came after she made the following comments (story from the Washington Post):

"I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again," Brown said. "Over and over again after the election when you stole the election, you came back here and said, 'Get over it.' No, we're not going to get over it. And we want verification from the world."

After Brown objected to the ruling of the chair, the House voted 219-187 to strike her comments from the record. Unfortunately, Brown violated a norm that members are not supposed to make personal attacks on each other, at the very least they are not supposed to accuse each other of lawbreaking.

As I understand the rules, all Brown had to do was to avoid saying "you." She could have said that Republican operatives in Florida had stolen the election. She could even have accused Governor Jeb Bush directly. (But not Katherine Harris, who is now a Florida congresswoman!). Those remarks might have angered her Republican colleagues every bit as much, but they wouldn't have been grounds to strike her remarks from the record.

What seems to have gotten lost in the fracas is that the proposed measure passed by a vote of 243-161 as an amendment to a $19.4 billion foreign aid bill. The amendment bars any federal official from requesting that the United Nations formally observe the U.S. elections on Nov. 2. The amendment is little more than silly xenophobic posturing. It is also a stupid idea. We should be doing everything in our power at this crucial moment to assure the legitimacy of American democracy in the eyes of the world. Saying that we are so afraid of international observers that we must officially bar their entry does little to elevate our badly battered reputation, and merely confirms an image of American arrogance. In any case, judging from our last Presidential election, and the current shenanigans over electronic voting machines and felon disqualification, if any place needs international observers to ensure fair elections it is Florida.