A Charlie Brown Congress

Sometimes metaphors are subtle ... but sometimes they just slap you in the face.  So it has been the past two days as my wife and I went walking on Capitol Hill.  As we did we saw the Congressional Christmas tree being planted in all its splendor. Except it wasn't that splendid.  It reminded us of nothing more than a Charlie Brown Christmas tree -- small, spindly, with too few branches.  [I sooooo wish that I'd brought a camera but .... the picture adjacent gives you an idea.] So why the metaphor?  We saw some valiant workers from the Architect of the Capitol working on the tree and stopped to chat with a couple of Capitol Hill police officers to ask them what the workers were doing.  Turns out they were "fixing" the tree by adding more branches to it.  In order to make it work, they were stapling branches on with nail guns and using wire mesh to hold the extra branches in place.  When (if?) they successfully complete their work we will have a perfectly wonderful facsimile of a real Christmas tree on the Capitol grounds. And that it seems to me captures Congress these days -- it doesn't really work right; but we are trying to hide that from everyone by covering it over with baling wire and fake branches.  Sigh ......