SAME AS IT EVER WAS | continued from 32
coequal chambers when they opted for a bicameral legislature. Laws in the United States, by contrast, require that a bill obtain majorities not once, but four times — passage first in both the House and Senate and then adoption of a revised measure in each chamber before it can go to the White House for the president’s signature. Lawmaking inevitably appears arcane and unprincipled, affirming the image of legislation as “making sausage.” Paradoxically, the unusual structure of the U.S. Congress discourages legislative ambitions in its members while demanding exceptional skill and tenacity to effect policy change. The framers expected that future lawmakers would be men of character and accomplishment much like themselves to manage such an unwieldy system. They held no illusions that all, or even most, lawmakers would be statesmen, but they anticipated that each Congress, as Madison asserted, would have “a few members of long standing who will be thoroughly masters of the public business.” In one respect, their expectations were correct: A few members have had an outsize impact on the institution. Yet shrewd observers of the United States have identified the absence of qualified leaders as a major flaw in both the legislative and executive branches. Traveling the country in the 1830s, Tocqueville concluded that Americans lack ambition for greatness as a nation, the result of their tendency “to eagerly covet small objects,” their disinterest in “lasting monuments,” and their propensity to “care more for success than fame.” Lord Bryce, six decades later, ended his magisterial work noting that American politics had fallen “into the hands of mean men” and that the nation’s greatest deficiencies had “least to do with constitutional arrangements … [but resulted from] the prominence of inferior men … and the absence of distinguished figures.” In hindsight, the framers failed to devise mechanisms to inspire ambition for service in the House and Senate and to ensure that voters would have choices about issues facing the nation. Instead, they allocated the responsibility for elections to the states, which gave rise to fragmented, anti-competitive parties heavily depen-
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In hindsight, the framers failed to devise mechanisms to inspire ambition for service in the House and Senate and to ensure that voters would have choices about issues facing the nation.
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dent upon interest groups. The unfortunate outcome is a deeply flawed system for identifying, recruiting, nominating and choosing individuals to serve in Congress. Such a haphazard system requires candidates to be self-starters, to personally assume a disproportionate share of the costs of seeking office, and to spend too much time raising funds unless they have significant personal wealth. It favors incumbents and fosters excessive localism and sensitivity to economic elites. The failings of the American party system fostered congressional gridlock during my youth at Chaffee and have played a major role in the budget battles of today. The one-party rule in the South, which sustained the oppression of blacks, had its origins in a backroom deal in 1876 to break a deadlock in the Electoral College. In effect, the Republicans agreed to stop competing for votes in southern states in exchange for the presidency. The GOP became the dominant party at the federal level, controlling the White House and the Congress with a few interruptions, until the Democratic landslide election of 1932. Meanwhile, southern lawmakers exploited the absence of electoral competition to impose the Jim Crow system and use their electoral security to gain
control of key committees in the House and Senate. With an effective veto over bills that went to the floor, they held off civil rights legislation for decades, until the assassination of President Kennedy and the landslide election of 1964 created enough political momentum to pass landmark civil rights legislation. A major cause of gridlock in Congress today arises from the pervasive use of primaries to nominate candidates for the House and Senate, a practice no longer confined to the South. Turnout is exceptionally low in primary elections, so a small number of activists and donors determines the outcome. Residential sorting produces increasingly homogeneous communities that enable state legislatures to draw district lines that discourage competition in the general election. Ideological extremists and special interest groups in both parties are in a strong position, therefore, to threaten lawmakers with retaliation at primary time, especially in off-year elections. Their hold over the nomination process discourages moderates from seeking congressional office, making compromise even more difficult. Historically, Americans have preferred pragmatic, centrist politics. Looking at the rhetoric and roll call votes of the contemporary Congress, one might conclude that citizens have turned their backs on moderation. Yet opinion surveys over the last 50 years reveal a pattern of remarkable stability in public attitudes toward the role of government in their lives with modest shifts to the right of center or left of center on most issues. In contrast, activists and the lawmakers they favor have polarized dramatically. The gridlock in Congress that I witnessed as a girl and the stalemate that I see today differ in important respects, but both flourished in the fragmented congressional system. In the 1960s, the landslide victory of Lyndon Johnson with its surge of new members broke the impasse over civil rights. Today, the absence of moderates in the House and Senate insures that ideological disputes about the role of government will persist until one of the parties realigns into a coherent majority that can overcome congressional fragmentation. ©