By: Becket Adams – nationalreview.com – March 9, 2025

Democratic legislators behaved atrociously last week during President Trump’s joint address to Congress, booing, heckling, and staging performative walkouts.

Speaker Mike Johnson even had to instruct the sergeant at arms to remove Democratic Representative Al Green from the chamber when the Texas lawmaker refused to stop creating disruptions, including waving his cane around while shouting inaudibly about Medicaid.

Yet you’d hardly know the extent of the petulant interruptions from following the news.

The way the Associated Press, the New York Times, The Guardian, and others told it, Democratic lawmakers merely “register[ed] dissent”; it was a “rowdy speech”; and the disruptions were simply “Democrat fightback.”

We’re a long way away from the days when a lone lawmaker could create a multi-day news cycle simply by shouting “You lie!” at the president.

Remember that?

In 2009, President Barack Obama appeared before Congress to address health-care reform. He asserted that the reforms proposed by Democrats via the Affordable Care Act “would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson couldn’t contain himself. He responded to Obama’s statement with the now-infamous exclamation, “You lie!”

Newsmen, commentators, and politicos everywhere were agog. Did a mere House member heckle President Obama? The Barack Obama?

The Associated Press, which referred to the Democratic outbursts last week simply as “dissent,” characterized the Wilson matter as “an extraordinary breach of congressional decorum.” The New York Times, which described the Democratic shenanigans during Trump’s address last week as “rowdy,” reported of Wilson’s outburst that it had inspired “a Congressional clash over civility” and that it “showcased the deep partisan divisions in the House.”

The Guardian, which characterized Democrats’ shouting down Trump last week as “fightback,” commented on the 2009 incident in its news section: “Obama cannot escape the sound and fury over the colour of his skin.”

“When Joe Wilson called Barack Obama a liar on the floor of Congress, the White House dismissed it as hardball politics while Jimmy Carter said it was racism,” the report stated. “The truth lies in years of Southern prejudice and a simmering resentment among some Americans that a black man could become president.”

Wilson was frog-marched to the principal’s office, the press shouting “Shame!” every step of the way. Republican leadership ordered Wilson to apologize immediately, which the congressman did.

“I’m a big believer that we all make mistakes,” said a supposedly magnanimous Obama. “He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I’m appreciative of that.”

Wilson’s outburst eventually earned him a formal rebuke by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Merriam-Webster declared “admonish” the 2009 “word of the year.”

For what it’s worth, the South Carolina Republican turned out to be correct.

In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded a $28.8 million grant to community health-care centers, earmarking an estimated $8.5 million for migrant and seasonal workers. Tellingly, the health centers did not have to verify patients’ citizenship before administering services. Later, in 2014, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell “called for extending Obamacare benefits to DREAM-eligible illegal immigrants,” as a report put it at the time. Then, in 2024, President Joe Biden opened up the Affordable Care Act to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, somewhere to the tune of $300 million.

With 16 years between Trump and Obama’s addresses, it’s remarkable how Wilson’s outburst seems positively quaint in hindsight. Today, it barely registers when lawmakers hiss and jeer the president during a joint address. What the “dissenting” lawmakers say matters even less. It’s business as usual; the outbursts are merely performative and forgettable acts of “resistance” designed to juice donations and fundraising emails. The protests certainly aren’t organic or spur-of-the-moment, as was Wilson’s rebuke.

Still, it’s worth noting that Democrats have embraced the spirit they once rebuked, trading any sense of congressional decorum for raucous shouting and collegiate protest in the style of a sit-in.

Sure, 2025 is obviously not 2009. Things have changed considerably since the early days of the Obama administration, most notably the introduction of Donald Trump’s “Broad Street Bullies” style of politics.

However, decline is a two-way street. One party alone is not responsible for what we saw last week. Blame Republicans for paving the way, sure, but don’t pretend as if Democrats had to be coaxed.

They’re all too happy to crowd the penalty box with Joe Wilson.

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Source: Decorum Is Dead | National Review