This column is not about any of the urgent issues facing us. Then again, that puts me in the company of all the Republicans in Congress who have stacked some of America’s least urgent issues at the top of their pile of priorities. So if they can spend their time on matters that don’t advance the interests of this nation— indeed, some of them seem intent on shutting down government and endangering our economy, which is the opposite— so can I. Which is why the subject of this column, however trivial it may seem, is the dress code on the floor of the United States Senate.
Its unwritten but traditionally observed dress code is being scrapped. Business attire now is whatever a senator says it is.
The thing is, one senator seems to think it’s basketball shorts and a hoodie. That’s Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. This photo, published in The Washington Post, shows Fetterman looking like he just came off the free-throw line. But no, he’s in the senators-only elevator in the Capitol, heading to or from the Senate floor.
Granted, formal dress started giving way to casual many years ago in America, and it accelerated during the pandemic. As The Post pointed out, “High heels have been replaced by comfier flats, and ties have been booted in favor of an open collar.” In fact the Senate’s own informal dress code changed 30 years ago when, for the first time, women were allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor. Hard to believe today, but it was considered ground-breaking.
For me, that’s fine. That’s about comfort. But I’m also a believer in sartorial respect. It’s a fine line, and each of us might draw it at a different place, but there are certain times, certain places, and certain occasions when our attire should match the import, and sometimes the gravity, of where we are. That line between sartorial respect and disrespect can be a moving target, but we know it when we see it.
I would never go to a funeral, for example, in shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt touting my favorite team. Call me old-fashioned but for me, there should be some sort of sartorial respect for the deceased, and the loved ones left behind.
Other unwritten dress codes over the years have bitten the dust, and good riddance. At a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away, people dressed up in their Sunday best to fly on an airplane. A trip like that was a special and usually luxurious experience.
But for a long time we’ve felt like when we fly, we’re being herded like cattle, so we see no need to dress fancy. I always wear blue jeans on airplanes but sometimes I’m one of the few men aboard who’s even wearing long pants.
Other times, formal attire is the worst thing you can wear. This is nothing the rest of you will ever confront but shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, I got arrested and expelled from the country for breaking some rules. I happened to be at the bottom of the steps of the airplane I was about to board when the correspondent sent in to replace me was just stepping off. He was brand new to ABC News, fresh from some local station’s anchor desk. He had flown in from New York, for thousands of miles and what seems like thousands of hours, yet he was done up in a dark blue pin-striped suit, a starched white shirt, and a perfectly-knotted tie. Before he had set both of his polished shoes on the tarmac, I told him, “Take off the tie, lose the coat, smudge your shirt, mess your hair, and find a dirty blanket to wrap yourself in. They play hockey here with the heads of their enemies.” In a culture like that at a time like that, a necktie could get you killed.
But that was in a primitive place during a war. For all its own occasionally primitive behavior, there are few more important, if not solemn, places than the United States Congress. The Washington Post’s editorial board argued on Tuesday, “Dressing formally conveys respect for the sanctity of the institution and for the real-world impact of the policies it advances,” and pointed out that Fetterman’s outfits would not be permitted if he worked as a teacher in many schools, or even in some fast food restaurants.
Not that a suit is the be-all-and-end-all of decorum. All too often, when we see photos of our national leaders, we just see a bunch of men in suits, which somehow makes decorum seem diminished. Some women don’t even call them “men in suits” anymore, just “suits.”
Still though, there is a place for decorum in the United States Senate. “It is… all too imaginable,” The Post wrote after the dress code was scrubbed, that we’ll see “T-shirts emblazoned with the names and mascots of their hometown sports franchises” on the Senate floor, arguing that it “might want to avoid looking even a tiny bit more like a high school cafeteria.” Maine senator Susan Collins pressed the point, swimming in sarcasm as she told reporters, “I plan to wear a bikini.”
Naturally though, some members of Congress were more caustic. Like Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. “The Senate no longer enforcing a dress code for Senators to appease Fetterman is disgraceful,” she tweeted. “Stop lowering the bar.”
But this raises a new question: if we had to prioritize standards of decorum, would we give attire or behavior more weight? Because if it’s behavior, then between her reliance on QAnon theories and her ties to racists and anti-Semites, Ms. Greene is the living definition of lowering the bar. For what it’s worth, here was her idea of decorum earlier this year during the State of the Union, as she shouted “liar” at the president of the United States.
In fact for several of Greene’s hard-right cohorts, decorum is a foreign word. There’s Florida’s Matt Gaetz, partying with a convicted sex trafficker. Missouri’s Josh Hawley, giving a fist pump to the insurrectionists on January 6th (only to run when they seemed to endanger him). And Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, expelled last week from a play in Denver when she was illegally vaping and spreading her smoke, and groping her date, and, incidentally, all but pouring out of her dress.
Congress is an important place. Issues of war and peace, civil rights and human rights, are debated and decided there. That’s why I don’t think the Senate should be yielding to Senator John Fetterman. I think Fetterman should be yielding to the Senate. But in the bigger scheme of things, we have greater issues at stake in Congress than what our elected officials wear when they come to work. The antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and company are a bigger breach of decorum than shorts and a hoodie.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
As much as I hated wearing suits, I think they should be worn in Congress. I like Fetterman but he loses a little of my respect when he treats Congress like it's saturday afternoon with the kids.
Happy Holidays to you and all your family. Casual is Casual, your not at the beach, your in the US senate. How many years did you wear a suit? Gil Dembo