Boston Globe report on Congress

The Boston Globe has performed a great overdue service with its three-part series detailing exactly how repressive of democracy and dissent the Republican congressional majority has been. The whole series deserves reading, and provides a lot of detail, both statistical and anecdotal, to support some points that I've made here over the past few months.

The big question that the series has raised in many quarters is, How much is this just revenge (in both senses of the word "just") for the horrible way that Democrats treated Republicans before 1994?

Eight or ten years ago, I would have been sympathetic to this question. The Republican takeover was a big deal in my life -- I would have been in line for a pretty interesting job running the staff of a Senate subcommittee had the Democrats retained control, and more importantly, it was obviously a terrible setback for the issues I cared about. But I also acknowledged that the arrogance of the House Democrats, who behaved as if they controlled that institution by some sort of divine sanction, had all but brought the disaster down on their own heads. I remember a conversation a few months before that election with a top staffer for the House leadership. We were working together on a provision of the giant crime bill that year that would have guaranteed a huge new investment in after-school programs (at a time when after-school programming was almost unknown), in the name of crime prevention. We had a disagreement about a detail in the amendment, and I pointed out that if her view prevailed, we might lose the support of several Republican Senators who were the key allies. "Since when do we give a shit about Republicans?" was her response.

Sure, this attitude was partly the cause of the Republican takeover, and for a while, some Democrats could console themselves that it was their just deserts. But that's a decade ago!! Despite their promise of institutional reform, the Republicans turned themselves into the House Democrats almost immediately, and then they kept going and going and going. In several respects, beyond the statistics marshalled by the Globe, the current situation is not remotely comparable to the pre-1994 Democratic hegemony:

First, a point I've made often, the current Republicans not only repress dissent from Democrats, they also force their own partisans to march in lockstep. The fact is that with tiny exceptions, either a moderate Republican like Chris Shays or a principled conservative is as thoroughly irrelevant as Los Angeles Democrat Henry Waxman. That was never true under Democratic rule, largely because until fairly recently, there were plenty of Blue Dog Democrats and others who maintained their independence and were willing to defy a Democratic president or align with a Republican president, as they did to pass Reagan's 1981 budget and tax proposals. That's not "bipartisanship," but it was more democracy and more give-and-take than under the current regime. What makes the current majority members willing to be lapdogs remains one of the great questions in my mind.

Second, the Democrats' control of the House had no analogue in the Senate, which depended entirely on bipartisan cooperation. Any Democrat who worked in the Senate during the period of Democratic control from 1986-1994 would be familiar with the question, "Who's your Republican?" In other words, if your boss wanted to introduce a bill and have it be taken seriously, or offer an amendment on the floor, or win some quiet concession in a negotiation, the very first thing you would need to find is a Republican cosponsor or ally, preferably more than one and preferably not always Senator Chafee! (That's why retaining the Republican supporters of after-school funding in the 1994 crime bill mentioned above was so critical: we had not only Senator Danforth of Missouri, but also Senators Domenici and Stevens, who were perceived as "real" Republicans.) I can't say for sure, but I have the feeling that "Who's your Democrat?" is not the first question asked when a Republican wants to introduce a bill or amendment.

Third -- and this goes without saying -- in the Democratic era, members of Congress got comfortable, a little greedy, and cut some corners. Speaker Jim Wright wrote a self-serving memoir and sold some copies of it to lobbyists. They used the House "bank" to get advances on their pay, and a few engaged in some real embezzlement. It's all trivial, though, compared with bribing members on the House floor to change their votes, blackmailing industries that hire Democratic lobbyists, and then one by one cashing out themselves for the biggest lobbying jobs they can find. (It's amazing to me that Democratic members of Congress like Waxman, George Miller, Ed Markey and others keep at it, even though they are completely without power, even though they have to work every bit as hard as when they were in power, late nights, weekends back in the district, etc., and it is the Republicans like Billy Tauzin and Jim Greenwood who cash out as soon as they have punched the clock with whatever chairmanship puts them in the best position for the $400,000/year job with country club membership.)

This is yet another example where, if there was once perhaps a case for some moral equivalence, it has long passed.

Comments

[theCoach]

The question becomes, when this turns back around, how much should be done in the name of just deserts?
I think the answer is quite a lot. I can think of nothing that would be better for the country as a whole than the complete repudiation of the Bush administration and this Republican Congress. Those that are cashing in should be prosecuted if possible, but more likely a new Democratic coalition should put pressure on lobbying firms so that those jobs dry up. It should be made very clear that their behavior is unacceptable and will stain their legacy forever. Justice will be served if Tom DeLay's grandchildren need to change their last name so that they are not sullied with his reputation.

[Roger Keeling]

I enjoyed this posting quite a bit, and accept -- readily -- the fact that Democrats (both office-holders and staff) occasionally acted like jerks. But it seems to me that, as you suggest, the insults to the GOP members were at some level fundamentally trivial.

Perhaps there's a good history out there on this, but my general readings in history have inclined me to think that most of the institutional rules that Congress observed until just a few years ago evolved -- primarily -- following the Civil War. Some went back even further, but almost all of the formal civility and careful allocation of perks to majority and minority parties were reinforced following that national calamity.

In the period 1865 to about 1932 inclusive, the GOP controlled one or both houses of Congress far more often than the Democrats. I'd have to go get a good political almanac to find out exactly when and how often control shifted, but the GOP was certainly very powerful through most of those decades. Doubtless there were various "outrages" committed over time, yet in general the political compact held and from this the long traditions of the institution evolved.

In 1933, the New Deal Democrats took over with a real sense of it being time to shake things up. Nonetheless, while being the majority had its (substantial) perks, it is my understanding that the Democrats did not begin changing the rules wholesale in an effort to screw the Republicans. And, in fact, the Republicans didn't do it either (e.g., after the 1950 election, or when they retook the Senate in the 1980 election either).

No, only THIS generation of GOP leaders have been so cavalier about the political compact that has guided our government. I think the changes could be seen even earlier (e.g., in the GOP's abject failure to extend Jimmy Carter the traditional "honeymoon" in 1977, duplicated by their unremitting warfare against Bill Clinton starting even before he was sworn in in January, 1993), but the full extent of their repudiation of the basic rules of civility and fair play in both House and Senate only became obvious with their victory in the 1994 election.

In asking whether this is "just revenge," or something more, I would ask: if it was simply revenge, wouldn't a perfect reversal of the rules and behavior have been more than enough? Yet, as the Boston Globe's series shows, the GOP seems to have adopted a pre-Old Testament view on it: a thousand eyes for an eye, and a thousand teeth for a tooth. It has been far more than "just revenge," and for a long time!

-- Roger Keeling
Portand, OR.

[Roger Keeling]

Oops -- a minor mis-statement in my posting above. In the last paragraph, I meant to say, "Wouldn't a perfect adherence to the rules and behaviors (previously followed by the Democrats) have been enough?" rather than use the word "reversal."

If the rules and procedures were so unfair to the Republicans when they were the minority, wouldn't they have been equally unfair (and hence, a perfect payback) to the Democrats when THEY were the minority? The fact that the GOP's leadership has seen fit to keep piling on ever more onerous humiliations and limitations is evidence that this is not about simple payback.

-- Roger

[perianwyr]

Since when has an equal action ever been enough to erase an injury?

That's just wishful thinking. Revenge begets greater overreaction, not justice.

Good justice is dispassionate, and when the justicar has something to gain, it simply doesn't exist.

[none]

Mark, you raise this question here:

What makes the current majority members willing to be lapdogs remains one of the great questions in my mind.

And I think you, at least partially, answer it here:

... and then one by one cashing out themselves for the biggest lobbying jobs they can find...

They're not in it for service, or devotion to principle. Being a lapdog positions them to get those cashouts.

[Nell Lancaster]

I have the feeling that "Who's your Democrat?" is not the first question asked when a Republican wants to introduce a bill or amendment.

This post and several others lately have been deeply enjoyable -- the result of a person writing entertainingly about something he knows very, very well. Thanks!