January 06, 2012 08:31 PM UTC

Udall's "Kumbaya" Seating PassГ©?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Hill’s Josiah Ryan reports:

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is urging members of Congress to take a “date” from the other side of the aisle again to President’s Obama’s State of the Union address this year.

“I don’t propose this so much that [I think] our approval ratings will rise, but it’s a way to create an environment to work together,” Udall said on Thursday, as reported by the Denver Post. “Sometimes, function will follow form.”

Udall was reflecting on Congress’s dismal approval ratings, hovering at around 10 percent, and the partisan atmosphere certain to prevail as the elections draw near…

Last year, what Ryan describes as the “acrid atmosphere” in Congress after the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords prompted Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado to call for bipartisan seating for the State of the Union address. It was a popular idea then, but we can’t help but wonder what the intervening year of all-out partisan combat in both chambers of Congress–and between the chambers–has done to that veneer of bipartisan comity.

Perhaps it’s more obviously a veneer now? And if so, maybe Sen. Udall should be finding something more substantive to do? “Bipartisan Date Night” for the State of the Union sounds swell, but it would be even better if voters had a sense that Congress was actually focused on doing real things to help the country, as opposed to symbolic feel good crap to conceal what everybody knows: this is a Congress that nobody trusts to get anything done.

Sen. Udall’s not the problem, but faking comity where there is none won’t solve it.