Leadership is supposed to be calm, measured and disciplined.
Apparently no one told U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT).
Because what America saw on Capitol Hill earlier this was not leadership. It was a tackle.
A senator — a United States senator — launched himself into a physical scuffle like a substitute gym teacher breaking up a dodgeball riot.
This is the United States Senate, not a bar fight in Butte.
Three trained United States Capitol Police officers were handling the situation. That is their job. That’s what they’re trained for. That’s their responsibility.
They are taught to de-escalate, not to improvise joint-breaking techniques with help from an over-enthusiastic senator who wandered into the pile.
Yet here comes Sheehy, charging in, grabbing legs, and yanking arms.
And then — crack.
Congratulations, Senator. That is quite an achievement for a man whose official job description is “legislate.”
Let’s be clear: This wasn’t courage. It wasn’t heroism. It wasn’t leadership.
It was terrible judgment.
There were professionals in the room; people trained for exactly this situation.
Sheehy was not one of them.
But he jumped in anyway.
Because apparently the senator believed the Capitol Police needed backup from a part-time amateur wrestler.
The result?
A veteran ended up injured.
The protester, Brian McGinnis, is a Marine Corps veteran. He is a citizen, exercising his First Amendment rights.
You don’t have to agree with him.Most people probably don’t.
That is not the point.
The First Amendment protects speech we dislike. It protects speech we disagree with. It protects speech that annoys us. In fact, it especially protects speech that annoys us.
And yes, protests inside congressional buildings are illegal. Yes, the officers had every right to remove him. That’s why the officers were doing exactly that.
Sheehy later claimed he was trying to “de-escalate.”
De-escalate? By tackling someone? By pulling on limbs? By turning removal into a wrestling match? That word does not mean what he thinks it means.
De-escalation looks like restraint, distance, and control. It’s not grabbing a man while his arm is wrapped around a door frame. Even a first-year police trainee knows that’s how joints snap.
But apparently the senator skipped that lesson.
This is the deeper problem.
Power requires discipline. Public office demands judgment. The Capitol is not a playground for impulsive hero fantasies. Members of Congress are not auxiliary security guards. And they certainly should not be freelancing use-of-force decisions in crowded rooms.
Because when politicians start throwing their weight around — literally — people get hurt.
And this time someone did.
The irony here is painful: A Marine veteran — a man who served his country — was dragged out of a Senate hearing, his arm broken in the process. All while a United States senator decided he needed to play action hero.
There is an old line from Martin Luther King Jr. that still applies today: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”
Exactly.
Violence doesn’t solve protests. It doesn’t solve disagreements. It certainly doesn’t solve politics. What it does do is make things worse.
And it makes leaders look small.
Respect matters in a democracy. Respect for the law. Respect for trained professionals doing their job. Respect even for people shouting things we strongly disagree with.
Especially them.
Because if we only respect speech we like, we don’t really believe in freedom at all.
So here is the lesson Sen. Sheehy should have remembered before diving into that pile: Leadership means stepping back sometimes. It means letting professionals handle the problem.
Use judgment instead of muscle.
The Senate chamber is supposed to produce laws, not broken arms.
- Doug was born in Great Falls, Montana in 1957. He graduated from Charles M. Russell High School in Great Falls and then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, with high honors, from Southern Methodist University in 1979. Doug earned his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Montana in 1982. After graduating from law school, he worked for the Montana Securities Department in the State Auditor’s Office from 1982-1984. He has been in private practice in Billings since 1984. Doug is married to Kathy Webster James.
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