Are we a serious country?

At the end of a visit to Brazil in the 1960s, then-French President Charles de Gaulle is reputed to have said, “This is not a serious country.” Besides being an apocryphal remark, no one knows precisely what the austere general meant. But many on K Street—renowned for its somewhat staid pragmatism—fear what his response would have been to a visit to the United States during the last few months.

De Gaulle would have applauded the often-bipartisan support the government is providing to Ukraine; he was no admirer of dictators. He might have understood the rash of mass shootings. After all, he had to deal with the Algerian War. He could have recognized vaccine resistance—as the “Yellow Jackets” have recently shown, the French love protesting without much reason. But it is doubtful he would have had much understanding of or patience with the state of what passes for politics here.

The chief case in point is the recent confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated to be the first African-American woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate prides itself on being the world’s greatest deliberative body, but observers of that disheartening spectacle could wonder if it deliberates at all. Tainted with racist “dog whistles,” dripping with sexism, soaked in condescension, and wholly irrelevant to the role of a justice, the questioning of Judge Jackson is certain to make one wonder if these degrading spectacles have any meaning at all.