Congressional approval ratings are appallingly low--ranging from 18 to 33 percent in a variety of news media polls this year--and trail even the paltry support President Bush retains. And those who got a glimpse of Congress in action Wednesday in the Roger Clemens hearing might be surprised to discover they are that high.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform can cite a legitimate public health interest to justify its scrutiny of the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Moreover, the Mitchell Report stemmed from the committee's original 2005 hearings on baseball and its subsequent scolding of Major League Baseball leadership to get its house in order.

But the hearing, much like anything Congress touches, quickly degenerated into a succession of partisan skirmishes where truth was the least important matter on the agenda. The Republicans seemed intent on bolstering Clemens as a self-proclaimed patriot (though pitching for the American team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic hardly constitutes heroic service to America) and  "a titan" of the game (a description that would also fit Pete Rose, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds). Some of their support for Clemens seemed downright delusional, like when Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina displayed four pictures from different stages of the pitcher's career and insisted, with the scientific precision of the human eye, that he looked the same size in all of them. Anybody who has followed Clemens's career knows he has undergone dramatic physical changes--you could actually see some of it in those photos--and the only real question is how--not whether--he bulked up.

I don't know if the GOP was carrying water for the President, who apparently regards Clemens, a fellow Texan, as something of a baseball buddy from Bush's days running the Texas Rangers. Or whether it was just payback for autographed baseballs and photos that he might have bestowed on committee members during three days of pre-hearing  lobbying. More likely they just saw him as a classic red-stater that their constituency might applaud, at least when pitted against a blue-stater like Brian McNamee, a New York City ethnic and exactly the kind of threat to the fabric of this nation that might never make it to our shores if the congressional GOP had their way with immigration law.

McNamee is certainly a sad sack of a fellow, a wannabe and a fetch-it. But as contemptible as he may be, casting him as a "drug dealer" and the prime villain in this matter when he was servicing his multi-millionaire clients at their behest, is fatuous. Then again some of these folks would prefer to blame the secretaries at Enron for typing up fraudulent documents than the executives who orchestrated the conspiracy. There were certainly no harsh indictments from committee members for Andy Petttitte's dad, who was revealed in Pettitte's deposition as his son's source for HGH on the second occasion the pitcher tried it.

The committee has now posted documents--depositions and affidavits--on its Website and they certainly shed light on the matter. Reading Pettitte's statement as well as that of Chuck Knoblauch, the other players fingered by McNamee, is painful going, as their testimony is cloaked in what appears to be genuine shame. But emotion aside, they tell fairly simple stories that confirm that McNamee was telling the truth about them. Pettitte, of course, goes further, saying that Clemens told him he was using HGH. Not the kind of shocker you "misremembered", as Clemens insists Pettitte did.

Clemens has no shame, just bluster and sanctimony. But then again, neither did the committee that hosted him. Its performance sullied everyone involved, not least of all themselves. Committee chair Henry Waxman has now told the New York Times that he regrets holding the hearings and only did it because of Clemens' insistence on a public hearing. Frankly, It appears to be one in a succession of public miscalculations by the Clemens team. I can't imagine whom Clemens actually convinced with his tale or his twitchy tongue. I genuinely doubt it was even the committee members who appeared to be on his side.