The Senate’s invocation of Rule 19 against Senator Warren could not have been more curiously timed. Supposedly concerned to uphold senatorial debate standards, to keep out the nasty stuff, Senate Republicans disqualified Warren from further debate on the Sessions nomination because she read from Coretta Scott King’s 1986 statement opposing Mr. Sessions’ elevation to the bench. Meanwhile, the President routinely tweets out abuse of political adversaries, in the courts or (as in the case of John McCain) in the Congress.

Of course, the President is not bound by the Congressional rules and traditions. But that is the interesting question: if there are standards to be applied to democratic debate, especially to the remarks of senior elected officials, why should those standards be limited to legislative speech? And, if extended to executive branch speech, how?

It might be thought that standards of this kind are significant only in the management of a deliberative body: their function could simply be to avert fist fights on “the floor,” where debate takes place, or, short of violence, to keep order. There is more to them than just this functional administrative purpose. When the Senate censured Joe McCarthy in 1954, the politics were complex, but the Resolution noted his verbal abuse of adversaries. It cited his accusations that the Senate was convening a “lynch-party” against him, that a senior Member directing the Select Committee censure inquiry was “cowardly,” and that the Committee was acting as “attorneys-in-fact” for the Communist Party. The Senate applied the severe penalty of censure in part because McCarthy’s vicious speech violated “senatorial ethics” and "tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."

This goal of protecting against institutional disrepute has been reflected for years in the ethics codes of both the House and the Senate.  See, e.g. S. Res. 338, 88th Cong., 2d. Sess. (1964]; House Rule XXIII Cl. 1 (“A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”) Members engaged in abusive and irresponsible speech are not only disregarding some housekeeping regulation, like a prohibition against bringing their dinners into the chambers: They are presumptively acting in violation of their personal ethical obligations. There is no reason why reckless, vituperative speech by executive branch officials would not bring dishonor and discredit to that branch of the Government.