Nancy Mace is a Member of Congress who was elected five years ago to represent a Congressional District in South Carolina. She is a Republican - and she is the first woman ever elected to represent South Carolina in Congress. Click the link to Mace's name if you'd like to see how she presents herself on her official officeholder website. Mace sits on the House Armed Services, Veteran’s Affairs, and Oversight committees. She also is the Chairwoman of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee on Oversight.
The picture of Mace, above, does not come from her website. It comes from the online version of a December 10, 2025, New York Times opinion column, authored by Mace, and if Mace seems to be in distress in that photo that is most definitely consistent with what she says in her column. As is typical, the online and the hardcopy titles to her column are different - but not that much. The hardcopy version of the column is titled, "What's The Point Of My Being In Congress?" Online, the title is even more brutal: "Nancy Mace: What's The Point Of Congress?" Maybe The Times will let you click that link to read Mace's essay. If not, please remember that those with a Santa Cruz County Library Card can get free access to The Times.
Here is Mace's anguished appeal from her column in The Times (emphasis added):
I came to Congress five years ago believing I could make a difference for my constituents, for South Carolina and for a country I love deeply. I was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets. I don’t scare easily.
But I’ve learned that the system in the House promotes control by party leaders over accountability and achievement. No one can be held responsible for inaction, so far too little gets done. The obstacles to achieving almost anything are enough to make any member who came to Washington with noble intentions ask: Why am I even here?
A small number of lawmakers negotiate major legislation behind closed doors and spring it on members with little notice or opportunity for input. Leadership promises members their provisions will be in a bill, then strips them out in final drafts. Every must-pass bill is loaded with thousands of pages of unrelated policies, presented as take-it-or-leave-it. The House has abdicated control of appropriations, which the Constitution says must originate here, to the Senate.
For much of our history, most House business was conducted under an open rule: Any member could offer any germane amendment. Over the last two decades, both parties have moved to closed and structured rules, in which no amendments or only handpicked amendments are allowed votes. The House has not considered a single open rule since 2016. Leaders of both parties have systematically silenced rank-and-file voices.
I do hope you understand why this description is so tremendously distressing. What our Constitution contemplates, and what genuine "self-government" requires, is that each person elected to the Congress can and will be held accountable by those voters whom that Member of Congress "represents." If, as a practical matter, an elected representative can't actually have any impact on the laws that Congress adopts - these being dictated by those special interests to whom "party leaders" owe allegience, because those special interests provide the funding that allows those "party leaders" to achieve their leadership positions - the voters who have eleted a representative can't really require their representative to do what those voters want. Indeed, why are those "representatives" even in Congress?
I consistently claim that we can make representative self-government work, but Mace's column makes clear that this won't happen without a truly significant shift in the personal involvement of voters around the nation - the "WE," in "WE, the people."
This kind of personal involvement may seem like simply too much to ask. Is it?
Not if we want to return our nation to a system of genuine self-government!
We need to put on our "John F. Kennedy Boots" and get to work. Click this link for my reference!
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