Fitch is the President & CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and a former congressional staffer.
It’s no secret that Congress is not held in high esteem by the American people. Much of the blame for dysfunction in Washington, and our system of government, is directed at so-called “special interest groups.” About 70 percent of Americans polled in a national survey said that “Congress works for the rich and powerful, not everyday people.” One research focus group participant said, “I feel like the lobbyists really control Congress. Everything’s going towards…the highest bidder.” Mainstream media and Hollywood consistently weave a narrative that members of Congress are automaton puppets, with nefarious villains pulling the strings. However, the reality bears little resemblance to this story.
The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) has worked with the Congress for nearly 50years, interacting with hundreds of Members of Congress and thousands of congressional staff. We survey their attitudes about work and constituents, review their operational schedules, and advise them on engaging with their constituents. The truth is that the biggest factor influencing lawmakers’ decisions are constituents, especially constituents connected to a nonprofit organization, trade association, or business in the district or state. For 20 years, CMF has asked the same question to hundreds of congressional staff: “If your Member/Senator has not already arrived at a firm decision on an issue, how much influence might the following advocacy strategies have on his/her decision?” Consistently, the top two tied answers for the most influential strategies have been “in-person meetings with constituents” and “contact from a constituent’s representative.”
The media and general public rarely see these interactions because they affect a narrow swathe of citizens. This is the very reason for organized advocacy, or “special interest” groups. It is citizens who have an interest or opinion on an issue exercising their constitutional right to assemble, frequently through associations, non-profits, and companies. Most interactions between citizens and Congress are facilitated by these groups. Doctors, lawyers, students, hospice nurses, farmers, environmentalists, small business owners, morticians, seniors, insurance agents, retailers, oil company workers, and even employees of media companies have formed associations to further their common interests. Thousands of state and national associations, nonprofits, and companies organize Americans to contact their elected officials on issues of collective importance, most of which do not have broad national interest and are seldom discussed outside of the group’s network.
For example, the Alzheimer’s Association might call on its members to encourage a Representative to cosponsor a bill to increase funding for Alzheimer’s research. Or the American Farm Bureau might reach out to farmers to encourage a Senator to speak publicly against a proposed regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency. The result is a cycle of citizen advocacy translating to congressional action playing out thousands of times a day in Congress, largely not witnessed by either the media or the public. This is not the warped influence of so-called special interest groups – it is a fundamental feature of our democracy for citizens to band together, monitor, and inform elected officials, expressing a voice on the decisions that will impact them.
The cynical view could be that enhanced power by constituents who participate with like-minded others in organized groups (i.e., “special interests”) would skew lawmakers’ decision-making process and lead to worse policy outcomes. But in fact, congressional staff reported that they appreciate a well-prepared constituent, as it makes it easier to understand the implications of public policy on those they represent. Better policy decisions are made through better citizen advocacy.
A few years ago, the legendary journalist Cokie Roberts was asked whether constituent voices really matter. Cokie was not only a distinguished journalist, but both of her parents served in Congress, so she had a front row seat in our democracy. “If it’s someone who is from the district, especially someone who is active in that district, Members of Congress pay a tremendous amount of attention to those people,” she said. Cokie added: “And the truth is, if people from a member’s district actually go to their office and see that member, it really can make a difference.”
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.