Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.
In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary. In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.
Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.
The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him. She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”
Talk about a turnaround!
She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.
In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.
More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington. We have tribes. At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.
Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-eixtent*, got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.
Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.
But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas. And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.
We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties. She just happened to use the phrase.
Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.
It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat. Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.
As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.
Who IS the team?
Look in your mirrors.
Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player? The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.
WE are the team.
Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.
Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team? No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time). And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.
So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.
*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry, “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.
Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”
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