Gould and the Senate

I noticed on the home page that Rick Shenkman has an interview with Lewis Gould, who has just published an overview of the 20th century Senate. Gould informed Shenkman, “I found no golden age in the 20th century . . . For the most part, however, senators spend time reminiscing about past decades when the body was more collegial and responsible. Yet, when I explored these supposed ages of comity and mutual respect, such as the 1930s or the 1940s, the actual behavior of Senate members at the time fell well short of these qualities.” He adds that he wasn’t “sure that the Senate ‘went wrong’ since I was hard-pressed to find when it was acting ‘right’ on a sustained basis throughout much of the 20th century.”

I agree completely with Gould about the tendency of senators to wax nostalgic about a past that was never quite as pristine as they recalled it. And, it’s hard to speak clearly about whether or not the Senate ever acted “right” at any point in time—since everyone’s definition of what constitutes “right” differs.

That said, it seems to me that Gould misses a sharp change in the character of the Senate over the past 25-30 years, one that has produced a fundamentally different institution than what existed before 1978 or so. What’s changed?

1.) The tools associated with Senate institutionalism have withered. It’s easy to romanticize the loyalty that previous generations of senators had for the institution—Richard Nixon’s operatives, for instance, described West Virginia senator Robert Byrd as a “king’s man” during the early 1970s, because of Byrd’s willingness to sponsor legislation to enhance the President’s authority in foreign affairs. But now almost no institutional loyalty exists. The Senate is a much more ideologically defined body—there are very few conservative Democrats (Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, and maybe Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu) and even fewer moderate Republicans (Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, and John McCain). So issues are much more likely to be considered in a party framework, with members functioning more like members of Parliament than independent actors. This pattern has, ironically, been enhanced by the regular use of independent counsels and/or special prosecutors. These outside investigators have, for all practical purposes, usurped what traditionally had been the Senate’s oversight function. Yes, Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski played key roles in Watergate—but so too did Sam Ervin’s committee.

2.) The political requirements of being a senator make legislative effectiveness and intellectual originality much less likely. Until the 1970s, senators spent the bulk of their time in Washington. They could comfortably specialize on one or two issues, and frequently got a pass from their constituents (think of Fulbright and Arkansas) on areas of personal concern. Now, senators spend a good portion of their time in their home states, tending to constituents and raising money. The idea that all aspects of their record will not be closely scrutinized come Election time is fanciful. Moreover, the 1978 and 1980 elections marked a turning point in the cost of Senate elections—and the need to raise money combined with campaign finance laws has had a tendency to produce more cookie-cutter candidates, in both parties. Intellectual originality is much less encouraged now than was the case, say, 40 years ago.

A case could be made that these changes are for the better—today’s Senate is more representative of popular attitudes on issues across the board than was the Senate of four decades ago. But regardless of whether the current Senate is “right” or “went wrong,” there’s clearly a different institutional environment now than was the case for the bulk of the 20th century, at least before 1978.