By Maureen Callahan | DailyMail.Com
The United States Senate has lowered itself to the whims of one member, a so-called ‘distinguished senator’ from Pennsylvania who refuses to appear on the Hill or with the president of the United States in anything else but a grubby hoodie, billowing shorts, and drab sneakers.
No one signals the death of American decorum like Democratic Senator John Fetterman. Except, perhaps, for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — who rarely misses a Sunday morning in front of television cameras, but who, over the weekend, very quietly dropped the suit-and-tie requirement on the Senate floor.
The hypocrisy is staggering: Fetterman insists he can do this very big job despite suffering a stroke that has left him with difficulty speaking and processing voices, that resulted in a six-week stay at Walter Reed for depression — yet he can’t expend the effort to look like a presentable member of Congress.
Actually, the question here is: Fetterman can’t, or won’t?
If we are to accept that everything is fine with Fetterman, then reasonable people can conclude that he simply doesn’t care.
We can assume that he is lazy, a slob, and is happy to present himself as someone who is not bringing 100 percent to the job. That he is a narcissist who thinks that a centuries-old dress code for members of Congress should not apply to him, that D.C. should lower its standards to meet his slovenliness, and laughably, as a source close to Fetterman once claimed, that ‘his relaxed, comfortable style is a sign that the senator is making a robust recovery.’
Sure. Nothing says you’ve beaten back depression by dressing as though you haven’t gotten off the couch for a week. Nothing says self-respect like showing up to the Hill in clothes you’d wear to scrub the tub. Most of us dress better for a coffee run.