TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041789/04178900.000

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.0 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 84

In Defense of Congress


By Michael Kinsley


    The U.S. Congress celebrates its 200th anniversary this
year, and scolds say the old fool is aging disgracefully. It has
declined, they say, from a serious, democratically elected
legislative body into a self-perpetuating oligarchy engaged in a
mad power grab against the Executive Branch, perverting the
Constitution and paralyzing the U.S. Government. The Senate's
rejection of John Tower as Defense Secretary and the deal
forcing President Bush to give up all hope of military aid to
the Nicaraguan contras are just the two latest examples. Other
supposed mileposts on the road to megalomania: the 1973 War
Powers Resolution, the Ethics in Government (special
prosecutors) Act, the Boland amendment (which was supposed to
halt aid to the contras but didn't) and the 1987 rejection of
Robert Bork for the Supreme Court.

    The theory is heard mostly from Republicans. We have settled
into an arrangement in which the Republicans seem to have
permanent control of the White House and the Democrats seem to
have permanent control of Congress. The essence of the complaint
is that Democrats are somehow cheating when they use their
control of one of the two elected branches of Government to
thwart the will of the Republicans, who control the other.

    The constitutional debate cannot be easily summarized. There
are conservatives -- and not just Oliver North -- who seriously
argue that a President has constitutional authority to pursue
a foreign war in direct contravention of a law enacted by
Congress and signed by himself. And to lie about it. What can be
said briefly about this and less sweeping assertions of
presidential power is, first, that even the conservative
Supreme Court has so far found them generally unconvincing, and
second, that these imaginative readings of the
separation-of-powers clauses come from conservatives who are
great ones for "restraint" when it comes to interpreting the
Bill of Rights.

    What comes over strict constructionists, for example, when
they contemplate the words "advice and consent"? Suddenly this
rather clear phrase doesn't mean what it says. Instead, it
means "Approve him unless he's a practicing alcoholic." Read
literally, the Constitution does not require the Senate to show
special deference to the President's choices for major offices.
Yet in practice the Senate shows enormous deference, approving
candidate after candidate it would never choose itself, even
for lifetime court appointments, where the consideration that
a President has the right to his own team does not apply. If an
occasional nominee sticks in the Senate's craw -- based on a
subjective judgment it can neither quantify nor promise to
apply uniformly in the future -- that is hardly an abuse of
power. Senator John Tower himself opposed several Cabinet
appointees over the years.

    The Wall Street Journal editorializes that the real purpose
of toppling Tower was "to cripple a President fresh from an
electoral victory. To demonstrate that the real power lies in a
PAC-elected Congress immune from effective voter control." And
ultimately "to dismantle the presidency" no less. Of course,
87% of the members of Congress are also fresh from election.
But this doesn't count, the argument goes, because Congress has
"less turnover . . . than in the Supreme Soviet," as former
President Reagan has complained. Only six House incumbents lost
re-election bids last year, and more than 85% of current
members won by over 60%.

    The reasoning from these figures to the conclusion that
Congress is "immune from effective voter control" is peculiar.
Why is it that Ronald Reagan's 59% landslide re-election in 1984
constituted a mandate but the 60%-plus landslides run up by most
members of Congress constituted a scandal? Why is the apparent
Republican lock on the White House considered to be a profound
ideological message from the voters, whereas the apparent
Democratic lock on Congress is considered to be a sign that the
system doesn't work?

    But wait (the theory goes on), those Democratic victories
are tainted because of gerrymandering by state legislatures,
most of which are controlled by Democrats. Gerrymandering
certainly happens. But gerrymandering hardly explains why the
Democrats have a large majority in Congress. Constituency
election systems inevitably exaggerate majorities; that is part
of their function. (How many times did you hear that Ronald
Reagan carried 49 of 50 states? Yet he got barely 29 out of 50
voters.) In fact, though, the Democratic majority is not all
that exaggerated. In 1988 in elections for the House, Democrats
got 53% of the votes and won 59.7% of the seats. In the Senate,
which is constitutionally gerrymandered in favor of the
Republicans (two seats for Wyoming, two seats for New Jersey),
Democrats got 52% of the votes and 55% of the seats up in 1988.
In the Executive Branch, George Bush got 54% of the votes and
all the seats.

    It might be better if the U.S. had a parliamentary system in
which the Executive and Legislative branches were always under
the same control. Not only would that avoid paralysis through
partisan disagreement; it would also prevent the evasion of
responsibility that is the real cause of paralysis in our
Government. Negotiations on the budget, for example, are more
like thumb wrestling than arm wrestling: the opponents don't
really disagree about the destination; they just know that
whoever goes first loses.

    We don't have a parliamentary system, which is why
Presidents are always calling for bipartisanship, President
Bush's favorite postelection mantra. But bipartisanship must
mean more than Congress always giving in to the President's
wishes. "The duty of an opposition," a hoary British political
maxim has it, "is to oppose." When the opposition controls an
equal branch of Government, opposition is a duty that can be
pursued gaily and without remorse.