Former U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who served 18 terms in Congress at the behest of voters in Michigan’s sixth district before retiring in 2023, was the featured guest at George Washington University’s annual Paul O’Dwyer Endowed Forum for Political Ethics. Presented by the Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM), housed in the College of Professional Studies, the forum is intended to emphasize the importance of ethics in politics.
Brian O’Dwyer, B.A. ’66 and L.L.M. ’76, endowed the annual event in honor of his father, Paul, a civil rights lawyer who served as president of the New York City Council from 1974 to 1977.
Upton is known for his dedication to bipartisanship and for being an independent thinker. He was not afraid to go against his own party, as he did when he voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection and when he opposed George W. Bush’s Iraq surge.
While serving as chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, a post he filled from 2011 to 2017, Upton was a driving force behind the 21st Century Cures Act, which he originally introduced in 2015. Signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2016, the bill provided funding for the National Institutes of Health and streamlined the approval process and marketing of drugs and medical devices, bypassing randomized, controlled trials.
The former congressman discussed this and other topics in dialogue with Lesley Lopez, M.P.S. ’12, program director for public relations and communications in GSPM, where she is an assistant professor. Lopez is a Democratic delegate in the Maryland General Assembly, where she is deputy majority whip. Their conversation took place after a reception and concluded with questions from the audience. They were introduced by Angela McMillen Ayres, GSPM’s interim executive director.
“Bipartisanship is not considered something that’s very important anymore,” McMillen Ayres said, adding that a prime goal of GSPM is “to underscore the importance of working across both sides of the aisle. These principles are part of a vibrant democracy and something I’m hoping that we can bring back someday.”
For now, the speakers agreed that, in our present, nearly unrecognizable political landscape, that goal seems distant. Lopez began the discussion by asking, “What the heck is happening?”
Upton said Congress is “a different place” from the one he worked in for more than 35 years. The degree of polarization is so high, he said, that he doesn’t currently see how a government shutdown in March can be avoided, since any agreement to keep it open would have to be bipartisan.
“The only way you're going to put Humpty Dumpty together is if it's going to be bipartisan,” he said.
“People are very critical of Congress for being hyper partisan,” Lopez said. “But when you look at Trump's agenda, it doesn't fit neatly into a Republican ideology. Are we seeing partisanship? Or something else?”
Trump has brought a disruptive style to politics, Upton said, despite the reality that it’s hard to get things done without allies across the aisle. Another factor contributing to increasing partisanship, he said, is that legislators aren’t socializing with colleagues from the other party—partly because they spend so much time raising money to get reelected.
“You just don’t have the relationships you need to get things done,” Upton said.
When Lopez asked if representing a swing district led Upton to be more bipartisan, Upton indicated that his approach just came naturally.
“I was not a rubber stamp. I didn’t give my voting card to anybody. You had to convince me that you were right to get my vote,” he said.
Upton endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, partly because of the memory of being locked in his office during the Jan. 6 insurrection, watching events unfold on his television screen.
“It was bad,” Upton said. “It was really bad.” After the Capitol had been cleared of the mob, he said, there were exhausted people lying on the floor and broken glass was everywhere.
When audience members were invited to ask questions, one wondered how Upton, who was a journalism major in college, would advise reporters covering the government today, with so much news “flooding the zone” that it’s hard to keep up.
Upton sympathized with the difficulty, saying journalists in general aren’t “doing a real good job of keeping elected officials accountable, in my view.” But he recognized multiple factors contributing to the problem, such as young, inexpert journalists, growing lack of newspaper readership and reliance on social media.
Lamenting the cuts to federal agencies, particularly USAID, Upton said U.S. influence on the world would suffer as a result of the cuts. He also worried about cuts to FEMA and to the Veterans Affairs Department, as well as the possible looming pandemics.
“We’ve got enormous challenges ahead of us, a lot of lessons to be learned, and we haven’t finished the test,” Upton said.
Despite the present paralysis and all its difficulties, Upton said, he is optimistic that eventually the nation will find its way forward.
“The only way it’s going to work is if we work together,” he said. “And at some point, the right folks will come to that conclusion to get it done. So we may have a little bit of a rough ride now. The rest of the world is watching as well.”
The “right folks” might include younger people just entering politics, he said.
“We need good people for public service—people willing to sacrifice, to do the right thing and to listen. You know, not be a rubber stamp, but to listen.”
