NEWTON'S LAW: CONGRESS GROWS ANTSY AS THE SPOTLIGHT IS POINTED ELSEWHERE

If you were in high school and took a summer job as a laborer, this bit will not be foreign to you.

The seasonal workers could never perform their tasks to the satisfaction of the year-round guys. From this tension came a steady stream of insults aimed at the teens, who, let's face it, cared mostly about a paycheck and a shirts-off tan anyway.

Upon some indiscretion, this was the line delivered to a high schooler: "Boy, you'd screw up a one-car funeral."

The line was often more crudely administered and had dozens of variations, some of them lewd, others unintelligible. The point remained clear: in the minds of the older guys, the young guys couldn't get the simplest thing right.

This bad memory sprang into my mind the other night as I was watching a joint session of Congress receive the remarks of President Bush following the successful campaign to liberate Kuwait.

Be clear on the context of this. At that moment, America was bursting at the seams with pride. The forces of right, our forces, had prevailed against an evil dictator. Television pictures were pouring in from the Middle East of people singing the praises of the United States in Arabic dialects; my God, when was the last time that happened? This was a momentous occasion.

And Congress was handed a task much easier than anything expected of a schoolboy laborer: all these lawmakers had to do was celebrate the fact that we are Americans.

And they blew it. They screwed up the one-car funeral.

How? Uncharacteristically, they managed it with a minimum amount of words. They were able to ruin the mood with what can be said on a lapel button, a bright yellow and mean-spirited one that proclaimed, "I Voted With the President."

A week earlier, in declaring an end to the war, President Bush told the nation this was no time to gloat. These buttons were all about gloating.

These pillars of democracy might as well have worn buttons saying, "Told You So, Told You So ... Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah."

Those who voted against the war resolution are now targets. They are purportedly lesser Americans than those wearing the yellow buttons.

Is Washington that cynical? Do even these self-centered, jaded lawmakers believe colleagues on the other side of this issue would have preferred a longer, bloodier conflict just so they could save political face?

As we said only recently of Saddam Hussein, who can tell what a congressman is thinking?

GOP henchman Bill Bennett, who served in two presidential administrations as Secretary of Unfinished Works, had this to say: "The votes for or against this war were important political acts, and they should have consequences."

Fine, but even if that's the way it's going to be, don't you think we could wait until there's an election? Why don't we take the time now to glorify those warriors who made the victory possible.

Congressman and minority whip Newt Gingrich, who is seldom troubled with forethought at the outset of a partisan declaration, offered this bit of insight about the Democratic Party: "The last time it was in power it couldn't get eight helicopters across the desert."

Class act, dunderhead, making political hay with the deaths of eight American fighting men. Jimmy Carter, the target of his wrath, wasn't flying that day in 1980. Those who died left behind families; regrettably, not enough of them live in Gingrich's Georgia district to alter his career.

But Congress carries the mistaken notion that all American eyes are on Washington. Big news ... they aren't.

The country doesn't care about the political hardships in Congress. What the country cares about now is celebrating the bravery of its young fighting forces, sons and daughters of us all, few of whom will ever seek public office.

Congress looks inward, to its own concerns. Like always, the crowd on Capitol Hill just doesn't seem to hear the country talking.