Fitch is the president and CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and a former congressional staffer.
It's no secret that this has been a tough year for Congress. The pandemic and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have left a malaise over the congressional community. The public continues to hold Congress is low regard. One public opinion survey asked what words they would use to describe Congress: "incompetent," "inept," "terrible" and "bad" topped the list.
The challenge for many Americans (and even some journalists) is to see past the caricatures, show horse politicians and Hollywood narrative to get a real understanding of Congress at work. The Congressional Management Foundation aims to open such a window to Capitol Hill and highlight the best in Congress through the Democracy Awards. The program is kind of like the "Oscars for Congress" (without the red carpet and fancy outfits).
The vision and goals for the Democracy Awards are simple and based on the success CMF has seen in our 44-year history of improving Congress. First, we wanted to recognize legislators and their staffs, identifying best practices in congressional offices. It should be noted that this award actually goes to the office, including staff, not just the member of Congress. That is of course because we all know that while the member is the crucial leader of the office, he or she cannot succeed without the support of an outstanding team. Second, the Democracy Awards seeks to provide examples of best practices to other members of Congress, offering them roadmaps to improving their operations and services to constituents. Finally, we hope the Democracy Awards will increase public understanding of Congress.
We all know that Congress is not held in high regard by the American public. But those who really know the institution also know the real Congress is made up of amazing and dedicated public servants, tirelessly working for their constituents. CMF hopes that we can shine a light on those members and offices, if only for a brief moment, then perhaps we can chip away, if only a little bit, at the wall of cynicism in our nation.
And this is no easy award to win! The process for being selected as a winner is thoughtful, extensive and based on clear criteria. Offices self-nominate by providing some information on why they think they are an award-winning office. CMF staff will interview senior staff in the offices of candidates for the award and collect corroborating information and documents. The winners are selected by a committee primarily comprised of former members of Congress and staff. The results are an amazing display of outstanding public service and a roadmap to excellence for other congressional offices.
This year's winners include:
- Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who employed a creative way to stay connected to his constituents during the pandemic while social distancing: He held "drive thru" town hall meetings in parking lots, where constituents could shout questions from their cars.
- Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who empowers her team by giving a "Truth to Power" award every month to an outstanding staffer in the office who has shown individual initiative.
- Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who created a nonpartisan Congressional Youth Advisory Academy designed to educate students on how Congress operates and the process by which public policies are formed.
- Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), who is so intent on demonstrating accountability to his constituents he often waits two to three hours after the end of a town hall meeting to wrap up, insisting on greeting and talking with every constituent attending until they leave the room.
The Democracy Awards are still nascent, only in their fourth year. But they are already generating the competitive spirit we hoped to create in Congress. At a 2020 panel briefing that included the previous year's winners, when a staffer described their innovative or award-winning practice, the other winners on the panel were feverishly taking notes!
At a time when partisan rhetoric is exacerbating the differences in the nation and Congress, it is refreshing to hear that a group of members of Congress have something in common: a passionate desire to serve their constituents and demonstrate excellence in public service. The denizens of the broader congressional community yearning to lift the August doldrums would be wise to study the successful practices of Democracy Awards winners. They might just be the tonic America needs to restore a little faith in government.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.