Washington: Anthony Fauci is 85. He retired from public service in 2022, after 54 years at the National Institutes of Health and 38 as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
I met him recently at a European Union event in Washington. He is physically fine, mentally fit and politically savvy, but there is no denying he is an old man who has done his time.
Yet, Republicans have seen fit to drag him through a McCarthyist show trial that may well result in the Department of Justice bringing charges of contempt of Congress.
Maybe that’s just politics. Fauci was gifted immense power – as occurred in Australia when politicians ceded government to health bureaucrats during the pandemic – and he does have to be accountable.
But he has been. These issues have been litigated over and over. Six years after the pandemic, we know what happened and why, even if we may not agree with everyone’s decisions.
So, it was jarring to see the raw anger from so many senior politicians at Wednesday’s hearing, meted out to an elderly man who has been through all this before.
Bernie Moreno, a Republican senator from Ohio, relayed a story about a family in his state who attended a high school football game during the pandemic and were apparently arrested for not wearing masks at the outdoor event.
“Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people, and that is you,” Moreno told Fauci.
“Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying: Who the f— do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace what you did to this country.”
One by one, they lined up to say their piece: a certain Joni Ernst, Republican senator of Iowa, who questioned Fauci about experiments using fetal tissue from abortions; Ashley Moody from Florida, whose gripes involved social-distancing regulations, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who wanted to know why Fauci did not endorse ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. He brought physical charts.
In other words, it was an excuse to rehash all the old grievances from the COVID years – not to seek answers about government funding of coronavirus research in Wuhan, which was ostensibly the purpose of the hearing.
And each of them exhibited a visceral rage. Sitting there witnessing this three-hour proceeding, one couldn’t help but wonder: How do they muster the anger after all these years?
Many of us wanted politicians and bureaucrats to explain themselves after the pandemic – to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what could be done better next time.
But this is not that. This is revenge.
It’s performative, but who are they performing for? Do Americans in Toledo, Omaha and Seattle really care about the questions that were asked in the Senate today? It’s difficult to think so. They’ve moved on.
Instead, what we are witnessing in Congress is the long tail of the deep, deep anger that infects and pollutes American politics, and which will not necessarily be extinguished by the departure of one Donald J. Trump from the scene.
There is something deeper here: a sickness in the soul of American public life.
The COVID-19 pandemic did not give us government at its best. We ought to learn the lessons. But there has to be a point at which you let it go.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
