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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
A More Perfect
Constitution: 23 Proposals to
Revitalize Our Constitution and Make
America a Fairer
Country
by Larry J. Sabato
Walker & Company -
October 2007
Creating
a Capital Congress
It's not hard to discern how most
Americans look at Congress. Whether in
public opinion polls or
person-in-the-street interviews, citizens
regard the national legislators the way
they would disliked relatives: They know
they have to live with them, but they hope
to have as little contact as possible. Can
Congress blame us for feeling this way?
Year after year, the Congress seems
hopelessly deadlocked on issues of
immediate concern to the country. Global
warming? It needs more evidence, maybe
deep water in the streets of coastal
cities. How about reform of our
complicated, special interest-driven tax
system that remains a national disgrace --
arguably the worst in the industrialized
world? This is never a priority. Health
care for the millions of uninsured
Americans? It always appears to be on the
agenda for the next decade or the one
after that. A balanced budget so that the
nation could begin whittling down
trillions of dollars of debt before it
completely consumes our ability to meet
the growing needs of an expanding
population? But that would cost special
interests their pet programs, corporate
subsidies, and tax breaks -- and they fund
the congressional members' campaigns. It
would also mean disappointing the legions
of well-paid lobbyists who have developed
close relationships with long-serving
members of Congress. The lobbyists deliver
lots of campaign cash, and whatever the
ethics laws of the moment, they find wars
to richly reward their legislative
friends.
Instead of seeing positive action,
Americans witness headline after headline
of congressional corruption. Some is
old-style sleaze-bribery,
influence-peddling, and personal scandals
reflecting ancient vices -- that reeks of
a sense of entitlement. Other
congressional fraud reflects modern forms
of dishonesty. The congressmen, in cahoots
with their allies in the state
legislatures, have cooked the
redistricting books, using sophisticated
computer programs to draw the district
boundaries in such a way that they can
almost never lose reelection. The campaign
finance laws are deliberately tilted
heavily in the incumbents' direction,
too.
It's wrong and cynical to dismiss all
of this as the inevitable consequence of
the corrupting power of, well, power. What
we have not focused on enough is the
effect that the rules and structures of
the American constitutional system have in
encouraging the corruption. Some fraud is
likely under any regime, and as I will
explain, any legislature will probably be
out of public favor most of the time. But
the degree and depth of the corrupt
practices can be reduced over time with
sensible reforms. To the degree that
Congress's unpopularity is due to
unfairness and ineffectiveness, the
proposals herein can make a
difference.
In some ways, we can pity the poor
Congress. It is not popular now, and it
has never been popular save for brief
periods during national crises. Right from
the very beginning, Americans
instinctively distrusted the legislative
branch and made fun of it. One of the
earliest ditties summed up the people's
view well.
- These hardy knaves and stupid
fools,
- Some apish and pragmatic
mules,
- Some servile acquiescing
tools,
- These, these compose the
Congress!
-
- When Jove resolved to send a
curse,
- And all the woes of life
rehearse,
- Not plague, not famine, but much
worse --
- He cursed us with a
Congress.
These verses were directed against the
Continental Congress of 1776! But nothing
much has changed, save the colloquialisms,
and modern Americans could easily be at
home reciting similar lines.
The reasons for the public's
semipermanent disaffection with Congress
are all too clear. No committee of 535 can
act with dispatch or appear especially
organized; even with strong legislative
leadership, Congress is composed of
independently elected members, each of
whom has a sizable ego. The division of
the legislature into two separate bodies,
House and Senate, creates more disunity
and contributes to the chaotic image
Congress frequently projects. The
legislative branch is also elected from
districts and states, not the nation as a
whole, so its concerns often seem
parochial, with the national interest lost
in the welter of special interests
clamoring to be heard. Moreover, with so
many members of Congress, at least a
couple dozen, at any given time, are bound
to be involved in legal or ethical
scrapes. Bad news being news, these
delinquent legislators soak up much of the
media coverage devoted to Congress, giving
the public a distorted view of the
branch's composition. And let's not forget
that the best metaphor for any legislature
is the sausage factory. People may like to
eat the savory product, but only if they
haven't watched it being made. Reporters
don't cover sausage factories, but they
follow every jot and tittle of the
legislative process -- and it's rarely a
pretty sight. Add all these factors
together, and it is easy to understand why
Americans hate the Congress. The only
brief exceptions are at times of national
crisis, such as Watergate or 9/11, when
the instinct to "rally 'round the flag"
includes support for virtually all U.S.
governing institutions, or moments of
special optimism, such as the opening days
of a new presidency or victory in war.
While acknowledging the justification
for much of the criticism, we also ought
to note that Congress works much as the
founders intended. The legislative branch
was and is designed to be the
"inefficient" element of the federal
government, slowing the "efficient"
branch, the presidency. The chief
executive by nature desires everything to
be done immediately, and his way. The
Congress slows down the president's
policies, forcing them through the prism
of the nation's diversity of opinions,
groups, and interests. After all, Congress
comes much closer than the president or
the judiciary to mirroring the country's
richness of talent -- by gender, race,
religion, background, occupation, and
ideology. While much remains to be done,
great progress has been made in
diversifying Congress over the past half
century. For example, just a handful of
women and minorities served in both houses
in the 1960s (an average of fifteen per
Congress through that decade), but the
Congress elected in 2006 had eighty-seven
women (sixteen senators, seventy-one House
members), forty-one African Americans (one
senator, forty House members), six Asian
Americans and Pacific Islanders (two
senators, four House members), and one
House member each for American Indians and
Asian Indians. The cacophony of
congressional voices is not harmonious and
will never be smoothly orchestrated by
anyone, yet how could it be otherwise in a
nation that is so exceptionally
decentralized and so decidedly
diverse?
No one should ever tamper with these
aspects of legislative representation,
except to strengthen them. Toward this
end, I propose to build upon the founders'
congressional model in several ways.
First, we need a larger, more
representative U.S. Senate that better
fits the massively increased population of
twenty-first-century America, with a new
category of senator whose job is to
advocate for the national interest first,
rather than the needs of individual
states. Second, the House needs reforming,
because extreme partisan redistricting has
virtually drained the lifeblood of
vigorous competition in elections. It is
time for a new era of real choice in House
campaigns, so that the House can resume
its position as the federal body closest
to the current thinking of the American
people. Further, the founders' idea of
expanding the House along with population
growth should be renewed, so that each
member of Congress can represent a smaller
constituency and have personal ties to
more citizens. Finally, the election
schedules and term lengths for both the
U.S. House of Representatives and the
Senate need to be realigned, so that there
is a better chance the diversity of
Congress can be harnessed for constructive
cooperation with the executive -- in the
interests of sound public policy to serve
the people. Taken as a whole, this reform
agenda can reinvigorate not just the
Congress but American government and
politics overall.
Copyright
© 2007 Larry J. Sabato. All Right
Reserved. Published with
permission.
The
founder and director of the renowned
Center for Politics at the University of
Virginia, Larry J. Sabato has appeared on
dozens of national television and radio
programs, including 60 Minutes, Today,
Hardball, and Nightline. A Rhodes scholar,
he received his doctorate in polities from
Oxford and has taught at UVA since 1978.
The author of countless articles and some
twenty previous books, he coanchored the
BBC's coverage of the 2006 election. In
2002, the University of Virginia gave him
its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson
Award. Please visit the Center for
Politics Web site at www.centerforpolitics.org
and www.amoreperfectconstitution.com
for more info.
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