A few years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day and a half on board the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as it conducted exercises off the coast of Florida in preparation for an extended deployment. It was a fascinating experience, and one of the activities that impressed me most was watching night landings by the ship’s F-18 squadron. An especially interesting part, at least for me, was observing the debriefing each pilot had to undergo after every flight, in which members of the crew went over each landing and explained what the pilot had done correctly and what needed to be improved. The purpose of these sessions was clear: To maintain a high level of performance, you had to learn from any mistakes you made so you could do better in the future.
I thought of that experience as I read about the Republican Party’s successful effort to prevent Congress from creating an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. As shocking as the initial attack was, the GOP’s campaign to keep the American people from learning from the experience was, if anything, more disturbing. They were obviously worried an investigation might cast an unfavorable light on their party—and especially on the former president, who egged on the invaders—and they’d prefer the country as a whole never knows exactly what happened on that day or why.
