David Broder and the (Daryl) Levinson thesis

Sandy Levinson

I note a column in today's Washington Post by David Broder, entitled, fittingly enough "Fixing a Broken Congress." He discusses the new book by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann detailing all of the things that are wrong with the present Congress, which, I have earlier argued, are all too well anticipated in some of Carl Schmitt's attacks during the 1920's on the Weimar parliament. In any event, Broder concludes his column as follows: "But a new election means new faces -- and possibly a new spirit on Capitol Hill. Mann and Ornstein have a number of specific changes to suggest in congressional rules and procedures -- and in lobbying regulations. But their main point is simple. We need an infusion of men and women committed to Congress as an institution -- to engaging with each other seriously enough to search out and find areas of agreement and to join hands with each other to insist on the rights and prerogatives of the nation's legislature, not make it simply an echo chamber of presidential politics.
That ought to be the criterion by which candidates are judged in this election season."

At one level it is hard to disagree with Broder. At another level, though, it seems an almost truly pathetic hope. As Daryl Levinson has argued, drawing on much contemporary political science material--I have just returned from the 2006 convention of the American Political Science Association--there is no real incentive for modern members of Congress to be "committed to Congress as an institution" (whatever, exactly, that would mean). As David Mayhew argued many years ago, the primary interest of members of Congress is being re-elected, which, of course, has all sorts of implications in terms of campaign finance. We are all familiar with the indecent amount of time that members of Congress have to spend raising funds. But there is also the ever-more-important phenomenon, partly as a result of some of the so-called "reforms," that it is also important to stay in the good graces of the national party, which has signifiant monies of its own to dispense. Although Tip O'Neill famously said that "all politics are local," congressional campaigns are increasingly nationalized. Moreover, O'Neill was basically defending a system whereby re-election was procured by bringing home the pork, whether or not any particular piece of pork could plausibly be said to serve any "public interest" even if it did, of course, line the pockets of a Representative's constituents. (Recall the "bridge to nowhere.") An "earmark system" of congressional politics means that any given Representative must remain in the good graces of party leaders, and the maximum party leader, of course, is the President.

Broder is evoking the classic Madisonian vision of legislators who are basically virtuous and "above politics." That has not described Amerirican politics for over 200 years. If Congress is broken, which seems a fair diagnosis, quite literally reactionary appeals to a nostalgic form of politics are scarcely going to be adequate. (My old colleague David Kettler wrote a brilliant essay many years ago criticizing the "republican revival" among political theorists by pointing out that it depended on a whole host of assumptions that no longer obtained in modern life.) I don't know what the solution for our broken and sometimes decadent Congress might be. ut surely we must think in more creative institutional terms rather than hope for what would in effect be a conversion experience on the part of those who would lead us.

Needless to say, I couldn't agree with him more that we need more members of Congress willing to put the brakes on an ever more authoritarian and removed-from-reality Executive Branch led by a stunningly incompetent ignoramus. But that is just to say that we need more Democrats in Congress, for all of the obvious criticisms that can be directed at the Democratic Pary. Lincoln Chafee might be a fine, upstanding person, but so long as he would vote to leave the Senate in Republican hands, he is a menace to the Republic who should be thrown out of office. It really is as simple as that. Could Broder possibly believe that it would be better to have a Senate that included the virtuous and in some ways admirable Chafee if it came at the price of the Senate's remaining in Republican hands (and therefore completely unwilling to engage in any significant oversight of their Republican masters in the Executive)? This election is not about the individual virtue of the candidates; it is about which party will be authorized to organize the House and the Senate, with all of the prerogatives attached to that organization, including all-important subpoena powers for investigations. I wish one could believe otherwise, but, as Walter Cronkhite used to say, "that's the way it is...."
Posted 5:26 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]