By Menachem Wecker
“How to testify on Capitol Hill without being crucified,” proclaims the press release announcing adjunct strategic management and public policy professor William LaForge’s new book Testifying Before Congress.
Asked if witnesses testifying before Congress are truly subjected to maltreatment, Mr. LaForge, an attorney and Washington office managing shareholder at the law firm Winstead, clarifies that witnesses are not necessarily abused but are often subjected to unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable processes.
“Testifying on the Hill is not a fair fight,” he says. “To the untrained eye, and sometimes even to experienced witnesses, questioning by committee members may seem harsh, and occasionally it is. There is a lot of human emotion exchanged, and the political and ideological persuasions of committee members often emerge in tough commentary.”
How grueling a hearing is for witnesses depends on the topic and purpose of the hearing, the committee members’ proclivities and their own performance. “The point is that witnesses should fully prepare for their appearances before a committee, understand the mission and purpose of the hearing and their testimony and then stick to the script, as laid out in my book, of course!” Mr. LaForge says.
Most mistakes that witnesses make are due to poor preparation. “Effective rehearsal, a total understanding of the subject matter, comprehension of the hearing’s context and purpose, responsiveness to questions and being an engaged witness are all key to avoiding typical pitfalls,” says Mr. LaForge, who was a senior congressional policy adviser for 14 years and has testified about a dozen times before congressional committees.
Witnesses who are not properly prepared sometimes display arrogance, shyness, unwillingness to engage, reluctance to respond to the committee’s questions or long-windedness. Except where personal liberties and rights are involved, in which case refusal to engage might be warranted, Mr. LaForge discourages all of those behaviors.
Still, testimonies are not all work and no play, and Mr. LaForge’s book refers to HITS, humor in testimony. In 1906, the 71-year-old Mark Twain, dressed in his signature white suit, told the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents that the bill it was considering was intentionally unreadable to non-experts.
Twain argued copyrights should protect an author’s writing until 50 years after the author dies. “In a few weeks, or months, or years I shall be out of it,” he said. “I hope to get a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten. I shall subscribe to the monument itself. But I shall not be caring what happens if there is fifty years’ life of my copyright.”
Other classics of humorous testimony include Casey Stengel’s 1958 testimony about baseball’s organization and Ross Perot’s 1993 testimony on the operations of Congress, Mr. LaForge says. Important (but sobering) testimonies include the Titanic investigation (1912), the Teapot Dome scandal (1923-4), the Kefauver committee hearings on organized crime (1950-1), the Army-McCarthy hearings (1954), the Watergate investigation (1973-4) and the Iran-Contra investigation (1987).
“Many Supreme Court nomination hearings have gathered notoriety as well, including two I include in my book: the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Robert Bork,” he says. “The former hearing is the poster child for how it should be done. The latter is the opposite.”
In his GW course on business representation and lobby, Mr. LaForge shares his experiences with hearings and testimony. “I feel it is an important skill area with which successful business leaders should be familiar,” he says.
Nothing beats proper preparation for a witness testifying before Congress. Congressional committees expect to be informed by the testimony and impressed by the witness. A witness should deliver on both counts.”