Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
As a regular op-ed contributor to newspapers in 39 states, I read a lot of various and sundry topics, seeking opportunities to craft a research-based message that might be of interest to readers.
A while back I read that 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. Soon after, a friend referred me to a 2013 Huffington Post article by Diane Dimon titled, “ There ought to be a law against an ‘incompetent’ Congress.”
After reflecting on these two topics – endangered species and an incompetent Congress – a little humor entered the noggin, research ensued and a serious column came to fruition. Let me explain.
The ESA has saved 99 percent of our 2,300 endangered wildlife species and their habitats (e.g., bald eagle, peregrine falcon, gray wolf, etc.). Congress last reauthorized ESA funding in 1992. But doing so again would be a challenge because reauthorization would require a competent Congress to take action. As Hamlet would say, “ay, there’s the rub!”
Despite rising polarization in Congress, researchers with the Center for Effective Lawmaking found, in longitudinal studies, legislative effectiveness is heightened when bipartisanship exists. Historians reveal we’ve had many competent members of Congress touted for their bipartisanship, including Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Robert La Follette, Robert Taft, Ted Kennedy, Margaret Chase Smith, Nancy Kassebaum, William Proxmire, Henry Cabot Lodge, Sam Rayburn, and – saving the best for last – John McCain and Tip O’Neill.
Truly bipartisan lawmakers are becoming extinct. It’s time for citizens to petition the government to enact the Endangered Competent Congress Act of 2024. But, we’d need a competent House, Senate and president to take action; we’ve not witnessed such a breed in decades.
A June 2013 Gallup survey found only 17 percent of their respondents approved of Congress’ performance. How’s Congress performing 10 years later? At the end of 2023, Congress’ approval rating stood at a mere 15 percent.
How bad is Congress? Here are some December 2023 headlines that sum it up: “ America and the terrible, horrible, no good very bad Congress ” (Fox News). “ Worst Congress Ever? ” (The Fiscal Times). “ Farewell to one of the dumbest years in Congressional history ” (Politico). “ Worst. Congress. Ever. ” (The Washington Post). “ Capitol Hill stunner: 2023 led to fewest laws in decades ” (Axios). “ A look back at how awful politics was in 2023 ” (The Wall Street Journal). “ This horrible Congress is even worse than you thought ” (The New Republic).
Ten years ago, Dimond noted the average salary for most members of Congress was $174,000 per year plus each lawmaker received over $1.3 million per year for office expenses. She wrote, “Now, let’s multiply that by the 535 members of lackluster, partisan-paralyzed Congress and you get a grand total that tops $818 million. So, what do you think? You think we’re getting our almost billion dollars’ worth of leadership? Yeah, me neither.”
Today, congressional salaries and allowances amount to $975,540,000. The average American works 240 days a year; the House was scheduled to meet for 117 days in 2023 while Senators worked 154 days.
To regain trust and confidence in our representatives to D.C., plus force them to work together on behalf of their constituents (hey, that’s a novel idea) and create a more effective Congress, we must begin by reelecting those willing to pursue bipartisan solutions and de-hiring the bottom of the barrel.
Check out the nonpartisan Bipartisan Index produced by the Lugar Center and McCourt School at Georgetown. Bipartisanship scores for members of the Senate and House are listed in rank as well as alphabetical order. Reflect on the ranking of your two senators and House members, plus the lowest ranking legislators in both chambers.
Not surprisingly, lawmakers in the top tier of both chambers' rankings are about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. Names of the least bipartisan will be quite familiar; extremists, rabble rousers and whiners to a fault.
Before the Nov. 5 election, let’s campaign to get rid of 20 percent of the bottom-feeder and least cooperating members of Congress – regardless of their party affiliation. They’ve proven they can’t or won’t work across the aisle. “Party before people” and “After me, you come first” are their mantras. If we cleaned the deck of congressional bottom-feeders, politicians and party leaders would quickly get the message. Bipartisanship would ensue to restore an effective and productive legislative body.
Are you with me or against me in having a more functional and productive Congress? You get to decide on Nov. 5.
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.