Another week, another installment of our exciting adventure into Government for Grown-Ups: Still with no guacamole, I note. (Whose week was it to bring snacks?)
That's the question I asked at the kick-off of all of this, and many of you had spectacular answers. Some, like Bursa Vortex, said the role has changed: "But 24 hour media has made representatives far more accountable for their actions. This means that the new face of representation isn't a change in the role of representatives but rather a change in the level of public understanding of what's going on 'under the hood' of a representative democracy."
Others, like lsujp, see the role as constant, but also flexible: "The role of elected representatives in a constitutional, representative democracy is to exercise their judgment--THEIR judgment--on behalf of their constituents... So representative governing is a balancing act involving the public will and the representative's own interpretation and discernment. Checks and balances are there because this never works out perfectly in practice."
Some fall cleanly on the side of representatives bowing to public will; some want representatives to trust and use their own judgment whenever possible. The thing is -- everyone's probably equally right, or at least equally able to prove that they're right.
The role of the representative in American government can be debated endlessly, because it's not set in stone or, more importantly for our purposes, in law or in writing, at least not so clearly as we might want. But I find guidance (as I so often do -- though civil religion is a topic for another time) in the founding documents we have. So perhaps Alexander Hamilton is the best place to start, since, well, he so often is:
When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.
In this letter (Federalist No. 71) to the people of New York, Mr. Hamilton argued for giving elected representative longer terms, so that they could be guaranteed some space from the electorate in which to make reasonable decisions. There's a seedy underside of implication to this argument, of course, and it is that which you'll find throughout the Constitution: some are better equipped to make decisions than others.
Because, hey, let's face it, the Founding Fathers were horrible, horrible snobs. Terrible elitists. Men who read Greek tracts not just for knowledge but for the chance to lord that knowledge over others. I'm sorry, Mr. Hamilton, you know I'm a fan, but -- you were a big, insufferable snob. (And quite the dandy).
Still, name-calling aside, there was a reason for their snobbery. At the time of its birth under the Constitution, the United States was still a country struggling to make its citizens literate -- heck, it was still a country struggling to keep its citizens alive past the horrors of birth. The men who made up the first Congress were probably the best educated and best informed in all of America1.
Try to say the same, earnestly, about any gathering today, and you can grasp how difficult this discussion has become.
Here's another example of the complex problem of defining the role of Congress in modern society. We're all familiar with graphs like this:
We've all seen graphs like these recently:
Ask any average voter in the United States her general opinion of Congress, and, as shown above, you're likely to get a negative response. But ask that same vote what her opinion is of her own representative, and the answer is quite likely to change. As an example, Gallup Polls in October and November last year showed that only 19 percent of respondents approved of "the way Congress is handling its job." Yet a CBS poll at the same time said 50 percent approved of the way the congressman from their district was handing his or her job.
So what's up with that?
To consider the role that Congress plays, there's an important distinction that must be made. Do we consider representatives to be national leaders, or district leaders? When we elect a person to the House, do we expect her to best represent our interests, or those of the nation? And what do we want her to do when those two things diverge?
Hamilton had a clear thought on this, as quoted above; the rest of the convention left some clues, too. How does Article I start? "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." A Congress of the United States. A national legislature.
Thus my vote comes down on both sides: Representatives must consider the will of the people, but also do what they think is best. Congress is charged to do what is best for the nation, which involves, at times, voting against the wishes of their constituents. This is true nearly every time a tax increase comes through; this was true in recent eras of Civil Rights voting; this may again soon be true when Congress gets its act together on the issue of gay and lesbian equality.
The role of the Congressional Representative is to work in the best interests of the country as a whole. This was the concern of the Founding Fathers -- not the narrower interests of states, who were already well-tended by governors and had been quite independent and powerful in the failed Articles of Confederation, but the preservation and representation of the United States as a whole.
When we talk of a Congresswoman's duty to her district, what we're really talking about is her desire to serve those people's interests in the way that will get her re-elected. What we should be talking about -- and what we so rarely are -- is the responsibility she has to look at the long-term interests of the country as a whole, because the Constitution was written with the idea that a nation sinks or swims together, as one, and Congress was given significant power to make sure that happens.
So where do we go from there? I propose as the next big question one of Congressional Leadership, both the nuts-and-bolts outline of it, and the broader question:
- Who does the Speaker of the House represent, and what special duties (if any) does she have to the nation?
- Who does the minority leader (in either the Senate or the House) represent, and what are his duties to those people?
- Why create these set positions of leadership at all?
- Are these positions chosen in an undemocratic manner? Should we be concerned?
I know this was a day late. My apologies. Please, as always, feel free to respond in comments or via your own blog, and let me know as you do. The Index for the project is subject to, and welcomes suggestions of, change at any time.
1 I mean in no way to excuse the obvious racism and sexism of the Founding Fathers. They were the best educated of their time -- but that doesn't mean the cultural education they received was of a quality that we would admire now. [Return]
2And I know the "Julius Caesar" quote is backwards, I promise! It's intentional! Just in case my high school English teacher is reading this.
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Catherine Forsythe
Writer to the Stars
Emily Holleman
Iron Skillet
Leslie Harpole
old new lefty
Salon.com
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And thanks, Wayne! I'm glad.
As the late Tip O'Neill put it "All politics is local", and you have essentially made that point. Interestingly, he made that comment in reference to a race he ran for Cambridge Town Council in 1935, yet he became a true national conscience during his career in the House.
Thanks for the post. And help yourself to the guac and chips.
It may be that the checks and balances are, at present, unchecked and out of balance. If so, then it is the duty of the Congress to lead the way to check the Executive and right the balance once more.
Perhaps political parties should be checked as well.
Grif, I think Tip had it just about right, as far as politics go -- governance is the harder thing to do, sometimes.
Members of Congress too often base their decisions on two major outside factors that fall outside the representative's judgment and the popular opinion of a particular district: party position and lobbying efforts.
"They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small, but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests."
The second is "The Federalist X" by James Madison. Good food for thought. Are they utopian thoughts? How can we not be motivated by "movements" and "factions"? So difficult, huh?
(BTW...sorry for the poor formatting of the quote, I am not very handy with this OS system, there must be a command to "center" and "single space" but I am all thumbs yet here)
The two-party system is entirely post-Founder. So are the realities of campaign finance. Last weekend on NPR Bob Edwards interviewed Robert Kaiser on his book “So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government,” in which Kaiser mentions that the average member of Congress (either branch) spends at least one day per week doing nothing but raising money for re-election. Since this is the main reality that determines the behavior of both houses of congress, let’s look at how it alters the realities of 1787.
There seems to be a sense at the Constitutional Convention that over time geographical loyalties would trump all others; that southern planters would vote with southern planters (for low tariffs and a gag rule on discussions of slavery), northern merchants with northern merchants (for high tariffs and against incipient labor unions), rough-hewn, tobacco-chawing coonskin-cap wearing frontiersmen with others of the same ilk (for keeping the Mississippi free to American commerce and annexing any and all land still in the hands of native Americans and Mexicans). So the founders sought to divvy up responsibilities between the two houses of Congress as a means of crossing these natural divides.
The House is the money chamber (Article I, section 7). Appropriation bills must originate there; the dirty work of raising and spending tax money get done there, and this has to a large extent determined the chamber’s character and structure. Competition between districts (even within a single state) for federal spending—the other white meat—makes this a more fractious body than the Senate, perhaps requiring the more elaborate leadership structure that has evolved in the House. (By the way, it’s only pork if it’s in your district. In my district it’s farsighted economic development.)
Today's Senate is somewhat more like a late 18th century legislative body than today's House is. Its leadership structure is, of course, just as determined by members’ partisan identity as that of the House, but the Senate historically has had a veneer of muted partisanship about it. This is probably due in part to the fact the Senate must give its “advice and consent” to all presidential appointments, and ratifying all treaties. Interestingly, although the House has the sole power of impeachment, “the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.” In other words, when deciding whether to remove a public official from office, the Senators are empanelled and sworn in like a jury; the House, whose function in voting whether or not to impeach is more like that of a grand jury, has no such requirement. Add to this the fact that the Senate, not the House, must ratify judicial appointments, and you get some interesting judicial resonances in the Senate’s role that are missing altogether from that of the House.
The high-minded ideal seems to have been that having more responsibility for the people’s money would cause Representatives from the different regions to think outside their regional boxes (Hey, we’ve got a budget to pass here, people), while having more to do with constituting the nation’s judiciary and overseeing the President’s foreign policy (death to Barbary pirates!) would bring the Senators together despite their territorial interests. Does this still work, even residually? These days geography is destiny to a far less extent than it used to be. When the bulk of money for the campaigns of some senatorial and congressional candidates is raised outside their states, clearly a new dynamic is in play. The fact that all of two GOP senators crossed party lines to vote with the Democratic majority on the stimulus package, and that party discipline was enforced within House GOP ranks, suggests that regionalism is far less important than it was for our founders. After all, the sovereign states of 1787 are far less sovereign today.
Should Senators, or some number of them, be elected at-large, or by region, or in some rotating manner, like the U.N. Security Council? Should House districts be larger, and multi-member, so that Louisiana (for instance) has a chance of electing more than one African-American congressman at a time? Remember, the founders’ ideal was to acknowledge human venality and defeat it as well as possible with checks and balances. So what’s the best way, now, today?
The congressional approval ratings you put up are of particular interest. I was dumbfounded, for example, to learn that it was not until late in the summer of 2008 that a majority of americans polled finally realized control had shifted from republicans to democrats.
How do people miss things like that? I mean, hell, that's one fo the big things mentioned in the 06 election cycle, right? And it took a year and a half before a mere majority of the public caught on?
The "My guy is great, the rest are assholes" is the kind of sclerotic aspect of the system that makes people advocate term limits (which I vehemently oppose). It essentially looks jaundicely at voters insinuating they are too stupid to exercise their free choice to elect or vote out whomever they see fit. It's the old "We know better then THEY what THEY ought to do" taken to a ridiculous extreme.
Interesting stuff. Kind of takes me back to my undergrad poly sci days lo those many years ago when the Reagan Revolution was just starting out. Somewhere a bunch of similarly interested kids are breathless about this stuff at the start of the Obama tenure.
Whether it's a revolution of a one-term wonder is still to be determined....
:)
if the role is to use their personal judgement, they will chose the path that advances their personal interest, how can they not? will this serve the nation and their constituency? sometimes, and sometimes not. tying the fortunes of a nation to the character of a group of politicians would be insane if it were a choice- as americans are born in thrall to the barons of the beltway, it is merely an on-going tragedy.
representative democracy is simply a lie, created to pacify the credulous.
The ideal of an Athenian style system in which the "demos" votes on all things; offices rotate by lottery through all eligible voters (and all must serve if called!); term limits are not extended; and voting is obligatory...even mandatory, seems equally unrealistic.
I love the idea of choosing officials by lot really...no campaigns, no campaigning, no slogans, no chance to be corrupted by campaign contributions. Sadly...our citizens can find a myriad of ways to get out of the ONLY true remnant of the Athenian system...jury duty.
A true democracy would not only SERVE the public; the public would by necessity and of right...serve AS the administration.
Still, thanks for another great article.