Ask Mike Gallagher. The Wisconsin Republican has been put in charge of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party — and the chairman so far is turning his panel into everything the covid committee isn’t: bipartisan, serious and productive. “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century, and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” he said in opening the panel’s prime-time hearing Tuesday — the same day the covid committee held its frivolous forum. “Time is not on our side. Just because this Congress is divided, we cannot afford to waste the next two years lingering in legislative limbo or pandering to the press.” He took no partisan shots, and he screened “a joint video that the ranking member and I put together to help set the stage for the hearing.” That ranking Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), reciprocated by acknowledging that “both Democrats and Republicans underestimated the CCP” and praising the bipartisanship and “our unity as Americans.”
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Gallagher is exactly the sort of person you’d want in the role as China’s growing aggression pushes us toward a new cold war. A 39-year-old Princeton graduate and former Marine captain with a PhD in international relations, he noted with satisfaction this week that his panel has “no bomb throwers.” Gallagher, by Krishnamoorthi’s account, worked closely with Democrats to draft a rules package that will guide the panel over the next two years — “a bipartisan agreement that has my full support.” It passed Tuesday without debate, amendment, or a single dissenting vote. That’s what happens when a leader puts country before party.
