Transcript
MR. PAUL LIGHT: — the new book by Burdett Loomis, who is a friend and colleague, an esteemed colleague who has written a book about esteemed colleagues.
I should tell you at the very beginning that full video and audio of this event will be archived on the Brookings Web site at www.brookings.edu. You can take a look at it later along with the full transcript. And Sarah will be taking questions later on today in a live Internet chat. Oh, tomorrow between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. You can send your questions via email any time between now and tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. at chat@brookings.edu. We also, as I might note, Brookings is both a dot edu and a dot org, but we would prefer for you to come to the dot edu, our dot org is very edgy and nonprofit-like.
And I am just so delighted to introduce Senator Roberts from Kansas. I am originally from South Dakota, and we looked longingly at Kansas.
[Laughter.]
MR. LIGHT: You have got better fields and you are a little flatter than South Dakota, and we like that. I talked to Burdett, who is also from Kansas, lives in Lawrence, and I said, "Well, I have got this bio for the Senator and it is very impressive. He spent eight terms in the House of Representatives. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1996. He has built a strong reputation in his fields of interest, which include health, education and labor, agriculture, nutrition and forestry committee, he is chairman of the Subcommittee on Production and Price Competitiveness. He is on the Armed Services Committee. He is chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capability Subcommittee, and he is on the Select Intelligence Committee. And he is chairman of the Select Ethics Committee. He has got the standard long list of important committee assignments, and he is a very strong voice on behalf on agriculture issues. He was the author of an overhaul of the Federal Crop Insurance Program in 2000. He is a strong advocate of strengthening U.S. trade. It is an impressive record.
And, as I said to Burdett, "Well, what little tidbit could I say? Is there anything beyond the impressive record?" And it turns out, and I remember this story, that he is regarded as the funniest United States Senator.
[Applause.]
SENATOR PAT ROBERTS (R-KS): Well, thank you, Paul, I guess. Actually, Senators are not funny. They are humorous but they are not funny. When I was in the House of Representatives, I used to call the Senate "the cave of the winds," but I don't do that anymore, obviously. Actually, that is true. We are trying to see if we can't do something in that regard. But as chairman of the Ethics Committee, I can tell you, Burdett, that your royalty arrangement is well below the threshold for any serious interest by the committee.
[Laughter.]
SEN. ROBERTS: I do think, however, that the involvement by all of you and by Brookings is certainly appreciated. This is a subject that I hope continues to receive attention. Robert Byrd, the institutional flame of the Senate, and a distinguished Senator from West Virginia, once characterized power with the following, which he borrowed from his coal mining roots, "When ye be an anvil, lie very still. When you be a hammer, strike with all your might." The trouble in the U.S. Senate today is that neither Republicans nor Democrats know whether they are the hammer or the anvil. The 50/50 split is unusual, but unprecedented.
By the way, Cokie, they ask me all the time, that is one of the most asked questions other than what it is like serving in the Senate with Senator Clinton, which used to be the number one question I would get. And I usually responded, "They should go ask Hillary what is like serving in the Senate with Roberts." But then that is another whole thing. But the 50/50 split is like two porcupines during their amorous period, you just have to be very, very careful.
The stakes appear much higher now with each side only a breath away from a majority status and both parties I think you could understand are poised to assume the role of a hammer, not the anvil. Let me submit that drawing partisan lines in the sand, however, is a necessary component of our democracy. When you debate the controversial issues, obviously you have some clashes of personality, sometimes the debate becomes very personal. Often this is used to move an important agenda. Is this bad? That is the question. Does this really stifle the political process or diminish our effectiveness as a Republic? Let's answer that question with another: Can our democracy exist without debate that comes from strongly held opinions and beliefs and personality? How quickly we forget the strategic maneuvering and the assaults waged by our Founding Fathers. Partisanship today actually pales in comparison to the fierce rivalry between Federalist Alexander Hamilton and Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson. They understood that controversy could be productive. Exerting passion on issues sharpens our sensibilities and does promote an agenda. This agenda then translates into a vision, we hope, where each side defines the direction of our country.
Now, I have spent more than 30 years on Capitol Hill as a Senator or what I refer to as a "bucket toter," a Congressman and a Senator. And I don't see any of this debate as particularly new. But what I do see as new, however, is the way the debate is being presented to America. Also, new, I submit, is a different kind of politician in Washington. And together I think they form what I call the uncivil circle that may be doing a great disservice to our Republic. Journalists, and you look in the bio and refer to as a journalist or a former newspaperman, a journalist is an unemployed newspaperman, and journalists continue to discuss the role they play and how they do their jobs. As I indicated, as a former journalist, I won't go there except to observe that today's Washington news reporting seems to me focuses too much on politics and personality and too little on policy.
Last week I read a Washington Post page one article on President Bush's tax plan in the House. The story barely mentioned the provisions of the bill. Only a couple of paragraphs were devoted to telling readers how much they might be affected by the marriage tax reform and the child credit provisions, but we had dozens of column inches that were devoted to inside-the-beltway asides on the partisan and personal bickering involved. So that is fair. But the other side of that equation is that the policy was not covered on an equal basis. And I don't think that is an isolated case. I think fed a steady diet of news that only emphasizes the politicians basically beating each other up over what is perceived as inconsequential politics, that the American public either tunes it out or becomes very cynical or both.
Both the House and Senate are different places than those I found on taking office 21 years ago or for that matter the institution I found as a staffer more than 30 years ago. You can either chalk this up to a selective memory of a mature Senator or you can take it as an observation. I believe some Members of the House and Senate as of today are much different than they were 20 or 30 years ago. In my class of the Ronald Reagan "robots," as we were called, of 1980, most members were determined to really commit themselves to the long haul in understanding the legislative process and in forming sound relationships on both sides of the aisle. While they were new to the Congress, they had some background in the political wrangling and the dealing. They knew and appreciated the nature of the beast. Tip O'Neill, the speaker, I am not calling him a beast, while we didn't like his politics, we knew he was a gentleman of the old, gracious school. I remember having my kids on the floor of the House when we were sworn in and then during the State of the Union speeches. My daughter, Ashley, who now works for (inaudible), immediately ran up to the dais and jumped up by Tip and said, "Tippy, Tippy, how are you?" And he actually put my daughter on his lap, which she never forgot. He was always a hero to her.
Like quarreling siblings who may not always like one another, we knew that despite our differences, at the end of the day, it was our job to make this complex engine we call the government run smoothly. Well, today, we have more members who simply come to office with little background or schooling in politics. They are here with a contentious agenda and they were elected on an anti-Washington message. This new kind of legislator often stays in Washington only two or three nights a week, preferring instead to live in his or her home state. There is little time to forge the kind of relationships and friendships that lead to appreciation of diverse viewpoints or knowledge of how the institution works. They are often quick to engage in hard-edged debate or personal rhetoric. In addition, I think without question members today do not travel together in what we call "codels" where you really learn a lot more about a person, you are able then to place yourself in their shoes.
So that provides plenty of fodder for a 24-hour news cycle that certainly thrives on personality and conflict and ignores hard policy. I hasten to add that I do not expect Cokie to go into a dissertation for 15 minutes on her next program into the vagaries of agriculture program policy.
MS. COKIE ROBERTS: Good.
SEN. ROBERTS: When I try to explain, and she pushed my button here, we were talking about agriculture and this vote, and when I started to explain it, usually it takes about 17 seconds before a high glaze comes across people's eyes and she is not in that business. But at some point, it seems to me, we need to break this uncivil circle so that America can see the real work that is done in Washington. Make no mistake, there is plenty of real work that is done here.
So there. I have put my colleagues in the news media under the hammer. And there is bound to be some recrimination, I am sure.
I understand it is my job to introduce your moderator, Cokie of ABC News. Let me make this very clear, she is not one of those reporters I was talking about earlier. Unlike many in this business, she has a deep appreciation and understanding of the American political system and it comes with her genes. Both her parents were Members of Congress of the old school and highly loved. And in the case of her mother, highly beloved. She learned the lessons well. I had the distinct pleasure of serving in the House with her mom, Lindy Boggs, most recently the Ambassador to the Vatican.
Some in the news business have such a distaste of politics that they won't even admit to voting. Cokie says proudly, "Politics is our family business." And I am going to leave you with another quote by Cokie, one that may be a little out of context but one that I think is pertinent to your discussions here. In emphasizing the importance of issues, she says this: "In politics, it is the women who are constantly bringing the civilizing issues to the forefront." Well, Cokie, you have got an unruly gang of academics here. Make sure they stay civil.
Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. ROBERTS: Thank you. So many of the things Senator Roberts said, my cousin, Senator Roberts, are so true. Sometimes we do just talk about the good old days, and we are wrong. The good old days were horrible in many cases. My father used to always talk about it in campaigns. "I remember the good old days, there was a privy in the backyard." But the fact is those friendships really were there that are not there now. And I don't know how you fix that with people going home every weekend or going home from Thursday until Tuesday because it really was the difference. The delegations all knew each other. The kids all grew up together. It was men in Congress and their wives at home but the wives were all on the same PTA board and running all of the institutions in Washington that needed running. So I do think that there is a certain amount that you just can't bring back.
I must say though that the whole idea of civility in the Senate just cracks me up because growing up as a child of the House, we just thought that they were useless. Why would you even want to have a Senate? A question that, as we all remember, Thomas Jefferson asked, and George Washington I felt never gave him a good answer. But when I was growing up there was only one Senate office building and all the towels and everything said "SOB." And it seemed appropriate.
[Laughter.]
MS. ROBERTS: My sister used to say we were raised in our family with only one prejudice and that was against Senators. And Tom Foley tells the story of when he was speaker. Some very sort of fuzzy tale, young Democrats came into a meeting and they were talking about the enemy. And he said, "Who are you talking about?" And they said, "The Republicans." And he said, "No, no, no. Republicans are the opposition. The Senate is the enemy."
But I do think it is also true that partisanship is not necessarily what we are talking about here. Yes, the institutions have both become more partisan. But, as Senator Roberts said, that can be healthy, if what you are looking for is a lively debate where you are trying to really come to a vision and describe it for Americans to make a choice. But civility is not the same as partisanship or non-partisanship. Or uncivility is not the same as partisanship. And you see it in all kinds of ways among members on their own side of the aisle. The Senate is congratulating itself over its civil debate on campaign finance — actually, they are congratulating themselves over debate. The world's greatest deliberative body finally had a debate, and they can't get over it. But the truth is that that debate was civil. It has not been in the past. There has been some awful name calling on campaign finance and it has usually been between members of the same party.
I remember I think probably the most unpleasant night that I can remember in the Senate was right before Christmas one year. And it was December 23rd, everybody was still in session and it was over a public works bill, a highway bill. And the two North Carolina Senators, who were at the time Senator Helms and Senator East, were holding up the Senate on this highway bill. And the Senate was fit to be tied because they wanted to go home, it was Christmas. And I remember Senator Simpson getting up and making the most scathing speech I have ever heard in my life basically saying, "We will remember when it comes time for North Carolina issues," by which we mean tobacco, "what is happening here tonight." And it was just — you sat there in the gallery with your hair going up on the back of your neck. That wasn't partisan. That was between members of the same party. But it was a Senator responding to what he saw as the uncivility of his colleagues in keeping the Senate there forever and ever, amen.
So I do think it is important to make the distinctions between what is legitimate, theoretical or practical debate and what is just bad manners. I hate to always come back to the fact that their mothers must have raised them badly but there must be some truth to that.
We have to talk about this three people who really know more about Congress than we normally get in one room. You all know Tom Mann. He has written five trillion books on Congress, and you might have even read some.
[Laughter.]
MR. MANN: You really know how to hurt a guy.
MS. ROBERTS: No, no, we certainly keep the statistical index. But Tom has been head of Brookings. He is now the senior fellow of American governance there and has taught in many places, including -- occasionally taught in many places -- including this year at Princeton. And Sarah Binder, again, a prolific author on the subject of Congress. Worked here on the Hill for Lee Hamilton, one of the most civil members that we have ever had in this institution. And she is now at Brookings, a fellow in governmental studies. And Burdett Loomis, whose book we are flacking, has also written a great deal about Congress. He is a professor of political science at the University of Kansas where he is the program coordinator at the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy. Again, representing an institution which is named after one of the great legislators of our time and a man who was most of the time civil and always funny.
So we will let Burdett start off and then we will go Sarah, Tom, and then we will move on to questions.
MR. BURDETT LOOMIS: Thanks very much, Cokie. And although in typical Senate fashion, Senator Roberts has left before we have a chance to get at him, I would say that Senator Roberts when he was sitting here said that he had about three minutes worth of remarks. And I said, "Oh, that means about seven in Senate time, right?" And he said, "No, 10." Well, I timed it, it was 15. So in four short years he has learned to be a Senator.
I want to thank Senator Roberts in particular. Getting to know him has been one of the real joys of being the program coordinator at the Dole Institute. He is a genuinely funny guy but, more importantly, he is a great institutional figure in the sense that he is in many ways a throwback, an inside kind of guy who while quite partisan, very Republican, believes in what goes on on Capitol Hill, whether it is House or Senate.
Pat Roberts' staff was instrumental in helping get the room. I want to thank everyone at Brookings. Particularly, I want to thank Paul Light, both for helping fund this book earlier on, in the earlier assistance at the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Brookings Press for doing a terrific job. One of the things you learn very quickly, sort of in the do you read this book theme, is that people say, "Hmm, that is a great cover." It is a great cover. And there are some good pieces inside it as well.
Let me talk very, very briefly about civility and let Sarah and Tom have a shot. And then we will open it up for some questions. It strikes me that one of the first things we want to understand about civility is that it is not an end in itself. I think Senator Roberts noted that. Cokie noted that. Civility, we can be super nice to each other and nothing will happen. That is not what a legislative body is about. Rather, it strikes me, that civility is part of an institutional mix that leads to other things, deliberation. We were just talking about how the House, always difficult to have any deliberation, it seems almost constitutionally impossible these days to deliberate. So you hope that civility leads to deliberation. Civility leads to representation. If you can represent your interests in a coherent and civil way, that is good because everyone else will be representing their interests. And, finally, civility needs, particularly in the Senate, to exist to move the Senate toward action. There has got to be some capacity to act in an institution that doesn't have great ability to overcome inertia sometimes. So civility is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
And the McCain-Feingold debate reminds us how well, if only occasionally, the Senate can behave. And what a service this provides. As you were channel surfing past C-SPAN the past couple of weeks, almost any time during that debate, you could learn something about the Senate, actually about the bill, what was going on. And I think that is a great service, not just in Washington but wherever you are, Kansas, California, watching the Senate in action. So there was deliberation. There was the capacity to act.
On the other hand, the reason this debate occurred is that John McCain in a very tough-minded way, and the Democrats in a very tough-minded way had pretty much forced the issue. So we shouldn't just say, "Oh, what a nice debate they had." They had a nice debate for a reason, because Senator McCain basically held enough cards to force that debate. So beneath the debate was the ability to force the debate.
And my sense here is that the Senate remains the Senate and that means it is highly partisan, it is highly individualistic, and it is usually in need of 60 votes. On all this budget stuff, you don't need 60 votes. So, in the end, McCain-Feingold, however nice, reminds me of the English proverb, "One swallow maketh not summer." We will see what happens as we go through this summer. It could end up being very hot for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is a 50/50 split. That is quite obvious. Someone like Senator Daschle both has to negotiate with his counterpart, his former leader counterpart, Majority Leader Lott, but he is also the leader of the opposition. And one of the things that you do as a leader of the opposition is oppose. So that may mean 50/50 votes, particularly in all these budget issues. And it certainly means looking toward, for better or for worse, November 2002. We are never very far away from that next election. So it is partisan. And there is nothing wrong with that. But partisanship more and more means not just deliberating issues, fighting it out, but looking toward that next election.
The Senate is also individualistic, highly individualistic. It operates on unanimous consent, as we all know, most of the time. How do holds operate in a 50/50 Senate? Do holds exist? Well, sure they exist. They are rumored to exist when it is said they don't exist. What happens in a 50/50 Senate with holds, and particularly within the Republican Caucus early on, with a new President, with a Republican government, more or less, tremendous pressure to hold together. I think that that won't be the case for very long, especially again as vulnerable Republicans look toward 2002. Again, it is an election cycle thing, a permanent campaign.
So beyond partisanship and individualism, there is always lurking not very far away the filibuster. And Sarah has written extensively on this. Again, it doesn't apply in the budget framework, but the Senate really does require 60 votes most of the time to operate. That will limit the agenda and it can produce lots of friction that may well make the place somewhat less civil.
In the end, I think that the Senate has to adapt, as it always has to adapt, to external circumstances, a China that may be more belligerent, a Republican administration that may be more belligerent than we are used to. Something like that that was never, so to speak, on the radar screen. It also has to react to internal circumstances, 50/50 in this instance. And civility helps but it isn't sufficient. Rather, the question you make, what can you ask of a 50/50 body? If there is real bipartisanship beyond 60 votes, you might ask a lot of it but elections do loom. And one of the things that any elector -- any legislative body has to produce is accountability. Accountability is part of the process as well. Indeed, it is a representative body. And, as Eric Huslinger (ph) notes in his article in this volume, "As a representative body, the Senate represents our society as a whole." And our society is not exactly the most civil and gracious sometimes, 24 hour news cycle or whatever.
So, in the end civility by itself is extremely desirable, it is even crucial perhaps but it is not enough. Rather, we should judge the Senate on its capacity to deliberate, represent, and in the end, produce actions that one way or another represent the deliberation of the body as a whole.
Sarah?
MS. SARAH BINDER: I am going to violate my standing rule of thumb, which is that people under five feet tall should not stand behind podiums. Can you hear? I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you can see me. But, okay, we won't worry about it. Well, thanks, Burd, for including me. It is very nice to be here, particularly on the occasion of the publication of your book. It is a volume that I think does something that is very hard to do, on the one hand to be systematic about explaining politics, particularly about explaining Senate politics. And on the other hand, still be timely and relevant and really speaking to a central issue in legislative politics today, namely, what does it take to get legislative accord and can the Senate still play its historical role as a deliberative body. It is a great volume. The pieces are very insightful. Most importantly, I think it gives us a good window on both institutional dynamics and personal dimensions of the Senate and why both of them matter to what happens up here in the Senate.
I thought I would just take a couple of my minutes here, in Senate time, I guess that would be about 10. In academic time, that is probably like an hour and a half. But I will just take a couple of minutes to say something about these institutional dynamics, some of which Burd talked about in passing.
When this Congress first met back in January, there was a lot of talk about bipartisanship, good will, reaching across party lines, particularly given the 50/50 split on the Senate and the near even divide in the House. Speculation also about how this would play in relations with President Bush. Everyday it seemed there is a picture in the New York Times, the Washington Post, some happy Member of Congress coming out of the White House, newly dubbed with a nice nickname, whether it was the Congressional Black Caucus or Ted Kennedy. One reporter, my favorite line, called it "the land of happy rhetoric." Another called Bush "the bipartisan love machine." The assumption was, sometimes stated, sometimes left unstated, the assumption was that this bipartisan talk and good will would be enough to push the Congress toward legislative accord and away from the gridlock of recent years. So even though we have a 50/50 split, reaching out across party lines would be sufficient for producing major policy change.
I want to convince you in my short minutes that it would be a mistake to think that bipartisanship and civility are sufficient in themselves for producing major policy change. As Burd said, they are necessary and they are desirable. But by themselves, they are not sufficient for producing or yielding major policy change. You have to take into account legislative institutions' rules, procedures, and practices because institutions will limit what is possible here on the Senate no matter how much good will and civility are extended across party lines.
So just a word then about these institutions, something about the filibuster, something about the hold, and a little bit about Senate relations. First, the filibuster. No matter how much attention we pay to the numbers 50/50, the magic number still in the Senate is 60, the number of votes you need to cut off debate. There are exceptions, budget resolution on the floor this week, but the magic number is 60. Why is this so important? No matter how unified Republicans are, alone they can't pass a Bush policy agenda. Because of Senate institutions, you can't win by calling together party line coalitions. And 60 votes means that all those party line votes coming out of the House, that is going to have a short-term gain only and it is going to set the Republicans up at the conference stage for problems down the line. So 60 remains the critical number here for thinking about what is possible in the Senate this year.
If there is a second critical number or institution, it is a 100, here thinking about the Senate hold. The majority leader constantly needs to negotiate unanimous consent of 100 Senators to avoid filibusters and set the ground rules for debate. A Senator supposedly outed the hold a couple of years ago to make it more difficult to make them anonymously, but the hold seemed alive and well and quite anonymous in the last Congress. It usually came up on executive nominations, judicial nominations, and I will expect we will see just as many of them this time around as well, particularly as the President starts submitting what are reported to be more conservative judicial nominees and in part nominees that are not being pre-screened by the ABA, something that will probably exacerbate the delays in the nomination process that we have seen in recent years.
Finally, then a third institutional factor to think about is simply the need for House-Senate agreement through the institution of the conference committee. I had trouble on the magic critical number here, the magic number could be a hundred plus 218 in the House. And then I thought with some fuzzy math, we would come up with — 318 is my new magic number. But just because we have unified party control of government, it doesn't mean the House and Senate necessarily agree with each other. In fact, bicameral differences, it seems to me, are really at the root of much of the gridlock on Capitol Hill in recent years. We would like to attribute it to divided government, differences between Clinton and congressional Republicans. I think it is equally the case that it lies with disagreement within Congress, particularly within the Republicans within the two chambers. The Patient's Bill of Rights, gun control, minimum wage reform, minimum wage increase, education reform, until recently, bankruptcy reform, all these died in conference despite the best intentions of House and Senate members. I think the 50/50 split, power sharing agreement is going to exacerbate the resolution of House-Senate differences. In part because the power sharing agreement had nothing to say about conference committees and who would appoint Senators to conference committees. Until that is worked out, the conference committee stage is going to be yet again an even more important source or point of gridlock in this new Congress.
So to wrap up then, as we think about bipartisanship or good will, I think we need to keep in mind the multiple ways in which these institutions systematically frustrate even the most civil, and in Roberts' case, the most humorous of the best intentioned Senators.
I will stop any type of counting of minutes right there.
MR. MANN: I think you are discovering that we are all singing from the same hymnbook. Cokie said, in her view, civility was simply being polite and being properly reared, brought up by your mother and maybe even a little bit by your father. But that is another story. But, alas, all of us are really saying it is nice to have but in many respects it is beside the point, depending on though, of course, what the point is. It was brought home to me when I thought of Mitch McConnell's sort of final peroration on the floor of the Senate after two weeks of debate on campaign finance. I, too, enjoyed that debate. I listened to it, watched it more closely than anything since perhaps the impeachment deliberation, if you would call it that, or the decision to go to war in the Persian Gulf.
MS. ROBERTS: But you teach it.
MR. MANN: That is true, I do. I am not typical. But Mitch said something like, "My colleagues, we have just done something either colossally or stupendously stupid." And proceeded to explain why he thought that was the case. Now, I disagree with Mitch on this but it is important because it underlines the distinction between process and policy outcome, that all of politics and government is not about how we conduct ourselves, although that is important because in this constitutional system, learning to live with our differences is crucially important, but occasionally we want to look at matters beyond that, like what is done and whether it makes any sense and whether the people who produced it believes it makes any sense.
As I listened to my colleagues, I thought in many respects the book is a wonderful backdrop for thinking about President Bush and his approach to governing after this extraordinary election of 2000. He may have taken heart from one of the initial recounts in Florida today. But if you read the article more closely, you know weeks and weeks of recounts are to follow. But it seems to me that what my colleagues here talked about are the limits of civility and affability. And what George Bush's approach to governance underscores is basically the distinction between tone and program, between rhetoric and actions. I would argue that how the Senate operates and how the Congress operates is determined more by the broader context within which it operates than by the interpersonal relations of the Members of the Senate. And that broader context is set by a number of factors. Certainly the preferences of Senators. And there we get the increasing ideological polarization of the parties. Certainly the rules of the game, as Sarah has underscored, this super majority cloture requirement versus the simple majority fast track procedure, which ensures that the debate on campaign finance will be fundamentally different than the debate on the budget that we are having here. The 50/50 split, the approaching elections, the parity between the parties, the reality of the permanent campaign, all conditions the way in which this body operates. But perhaps as important or more important in any of these individual matters is the approach of the new President to the body, to the Congress, his fundamental decisions, his strategic decisions regarding how to govern. That is to say my belief is that policy shapes politics more than politics shapes policy, that the decision of what to go for and where to play has more impact on the nature of the Senate's deliberation than the Senate's deliberation has on the nature of the policy itself.
George Bush, in spite of the close election and the even division in the Congress, has made a decision to work from his base. That is given the polarization of the parties ideologically, he has decided to govern as a conservative, pursuing a conservative agenda, and hoping to move only gradually to the center as needed to pick up individual votes to put together majorities. That may end up being a very wise decision. But it may end up being not so wise. But it is a fateful decision because it has structured how the House operated in the first weeks and months of this Congress. Cokie, our old House, our favorite House isn't doing much of what we used to see it do. It is just running things through without any sense of deliberation. And now it is structuring the way in which the Senate is approaching these same issues.
Yes, it is more complicated. There are some Republican Senators from Democratic states, like Rhode Island and Vermont who at some point will make this more interesting. But imagine how different the Senate would be looking today if George Bush had decided — made a different strategic decision and said he was going to somehow on certain matters, not all matters, build the center-out coalition, particularly let's say in the area of taxes. I think all of us here could guarantee a package that would have sailed through both Houses without the protection of reconciliation, without a budget resolution. It would have set in motion very, very different processes and politics. So I think the President's decisions were fateful. He didn't make them independent of other contextual factors operating on the Senate. His decision is defensible. It may in the end be successful but it was certainly fateful.
Now, one final point I would make. Those of us who earn a very nice living convecting about American politics have a tendency to, as Senator Roberts said, put a lot of emphasis on the game of politics and to make judgments based on who is winning and who is losing. It is crucial that President Bush win this initial vote. That is natural. It is partly a game. And it is a game we all love to observe and to comment on. But there are sort of two other dimensions that are worth paying attention to, and I think this book helps us, reminds us of them. One is sort of the nature of the deliberative process. Is what people are saying plausible/credible? Does it make any sense? Do the proposals being advocated by Republicans and Democrats in any way sort of address the problems they are talking about? Are they confronting one another in any sort of meaningful way? Did they hear one another? Are there settings in which they move away from the sort of parliamentary style, sort of party line debates and move into a subcommittee or committee where they actually take in new information, reconsider their positions? That is what this Congress' comparative advantage is supposed to be. Is it evident in this new Congress or is it being overwhelmed by the first.
And the final is the quality of the legislative product, the action, be it legislation, be it in the way of appointments. Executive appointments, judicial appointments are made and processed by the Senate by the investigations that go forward, by the oversight of agencies that occurs. In the end, the content of what is done up here matters a whole lot. To some extent, that too is structured by the broad context, the very factors I have been talking about. Our hope is that before too long we will sort of get beyond the macho test of one's ability to win and move to deal with the set of problems before us.
Thank you.
MS. ROBERTS: I am going to turn to all of you in just a minute, so please be ready. But I will start. First of all, I actually don't think it is beside the point, civility, either inside or outside of the institution, particularly outside of the institution because it certainly affects the public's view of the institution of Congress. And that then affects its ability to get things done because if people don't invest in it some sense of legitimacy and they think they are just a bunch of squabbling school boys, then that is significant. And, B, I think it does affect inside the institution, and I am grateful that you brought up Bush in this context, Tom, because even though you are talking about how he is doing policy, the other part is he and his operatives were so amazed during the campaign at how much this question of bringing back civility to Washington played with the American people. And they just kept saying it throughout the campaign, this is a good issue. We will stick with it. And one of the first things he did was give a very strong signal to Dan Burton to back off on the pardons investigation. So that then does affect operations inside the institution. So I do think it is not beside the point.
But the question I have specifically about the Senate to all of you, and then we will come to you, the Senate is supposed to be the place where you don't have this strong factionalism that you do in the House. It makes sense for Members of the House to be feeling very polarized at the moment, the way the districts are drawn, they are very cohesive districts, all of that. Senators represent whole states. We see in poll after poll, interview after interview, Americans are not feeling partisan. They are not polarized. They identify themselves as independents or very weak Democrats or Republicans. So why, given that, would the Senate of all institutions be polarized and partisan?
MS. BINDER: It is a great question because it flies in the face of what we normally think —
MS. ROBERTS: Right.
MS. BINDER: — or occasionally teach about House and Senate differences. I think part of it reflects changes in the ways in which even Senators get elected. Where do they raise other money from. Who are their base constituencies. If you look at the most active of electorate, the most active partisans, those activist partisans, they are more extreme than your average American. So in the end Senators do need to cobble a state coalition together. But they need to be responsive to these constituencies who are the core of really building their home coalition. If those special constituencies polarize themselves, it is going to affect the types of policy views that come into the Senate I think down the line.
Another thing to keep in mind here. I think we sort of take as a standard of the Senate this sort of bipartisanship that grew out of the forties and fifties and sixties when there was a large group of southern conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. But that itself is a historical anomaly. The 1890's were just as ugly and partisan as it is today.
MS. ROBERTS: And the Congress going back and forth between parties constantly in that period as well. Tom?
MR. MANN: I think Sarah is dead right, I just want to add a footnote or two. One, Cokie, on the public side, we are caught in a view of the public circa early seventies when we had this decline in partisanship, the increase in independence. Since then party has become more important to average citizens and voters in particular as opposed to non-voters. But among those who vote, parties haven't been this strong since the late fifties. It turns out parties mean a lot. And what we have seen at the mass public level —
MS. ROBERTS: That is not what we are seeing in the polling.
MR. MANN: Yes, I can tell you the evidence on this is really growing. There has been an ideological sorting of voters by party. You have many fewer people who identify as both conservatives and Democrats. And also fewer that identify as liberals and Republicans.
MS. ROBERTS: That is true.
MR. MANN: There has been a sorting of the public into partisan camps. We have smaller — we have less split ticket voting now than we had during the period of the sixties and the seventies. We have little defection from party among voters. It is partly because of the aftermath of the civil rights revolution, the sorting out into partisan camps. And the same thing has happened in Congress at the activist level. So people find themselves more strongly in partisan camps than they did before. And this is all reinforced by the intensity felt among those in the activist cadre.
But I would add one final point, which is money. I think perhaps the biggest change that I have observed in Congress over the last couple of decades is the active involvement of the congressional leaders through the congressional party campaign committees in big time fundraising. Everyone is deeply involved. Cokie, it was penny ante back then compared to — they all did it but the amounts were so small and the amount of time. There were norms. For example, a speaker or a majority whip would not travel to the district of a member of the opposition, an incumbent, and campaign against them. There were certain norms that were absorbed. If you just look at the schedule of leaders and aspiring leaders and look at the involvement, the national campaign committees, congressional campaign committees, have grown in their fundraising twenty-fold in the last few years. It penetrates all aspects of what they do and tends to sharpen the partisan differences. And I think makes it more difficult to have those cross party deliberations.
MS. ROBERTS: Do you want to address this or shall we —
MR. LOOMIS: I will just say one thing. At a much more micro level than macro, I think crucial in the Senate is the byplay between the floor leaders. And Senator Lott and Senator Daschle, the way they operate is extraordinarily important, as is any pair of leaders, whether it was Dole and George Mitchell, whatever. And frequently, Dole and Mitchell, very partisan people who could have a dialogue I think. I honestly think with Senator Lott, he like Senator Roberts came from the House. Senator Roberts probably acted more like a Senator in the House and acts like a Senator now. I think Senator Lott looks over at the House and there is kind of a House envy. You can ram things through there. And there is a kind of style there. He wants to have that dialogue, you can see him on the floor. At the same time, push comes to shove, he ends up being very much socialized into a House that if you have the votes, you can get your way.
MS. ROBERTS: Questions? Yes.
QUESTION: I had a question. There were some comments about the lack of deliberations in the House this session. The initial bill dealt with taxes. Was it a strategic mistake to bring that up first instead of the education bill where there was more agreement between the parties? And also the way the Republicans rammed the bill through, would you consider that uncivil? And also the fact that the Democrats attempted to demonize them for doing that, would you consider that uncivil?
MS. ROBERTS: I will take that question. I saw questions about uncivility. And, look, they bring bills to the floor that no one has seen in their lives, including the floor managers. So the questions about process when it comes to looking at legislation are always true, they will always be there. They are sort of the last thing to stand on when you know when you are going to lose, is to say, "Oh this process wasn't fair." But that is life. That is what comes with being a loser.
But I actually don't think it was a mistake, and I actually disagree with Tom on the question of taxes, only on taxes. It is the only bill I think this is the case for. Quite the contrary, it is not despite the close election that Bush is doing this, I believe it is because of the close election that he is doing this, that he feels that he didn't get a mandate from the election and that he has to get a mandate somehow. And that getting through this $1.6 trillion tax cut, which the whole world said he couldn't do, is going to be in his view the way that he shows everybody, see, I really am President. I really am in charge here. Now, let's deal. Now, that has got a lot of flaws attached to it. One of which is that the world keeps getting in his way so that he keeps wanting to talk taxes and the House has been very helpful to him along those lines. But the House doesn't have John McCain in it. And all of a sudden there is an airplane down in China. And there is an energy crisis looming. So that I think that his ability to make the tax deal the big deal that he wants to make it is much diminished. But I do think that was the point of it, and I don't think it was a crazy strategy.
MR. MANN: As I said before, it is a strategy that may prove successful. But it is fateful in terms of its impact on how the Congress operates. And your question is right on point, namely, given the strategic decision Bush made, it made every bit of sense to move elements of the tax cut through the House very quickly and not mess around to build up a presumption of. This is a wise decision and at the very end, if he has to, he will take what he gets and declare victory and so on. What I guess I am raising is a question about that this is more than a little game of I can get my way. He tabled that tax cut late '99 facing Steve Forbes. The argumentation, the rationale for it has disappeared from the scene. Now it is the perfect size tax cut for this economy which is pretty different than he found we had back then. Different arguments, different rationales, most of them don't make sense. But, once again, I would say, Cokie, he is playing into this judging political trends. He is trying to make something out of nothing to create a mandate out of governing where none existed in the election. But if the arguments are flawed and the deliberative process eventually breaks it down and it is transformed in some fundamental way, would he have been better as a leader sort of coming to that himself.
QUESTION: I had a question about moderate Democrats in the Senate. Tom, you had said that, well, I actually noticed that McConnell had basically said that there were Democrats who probably would have voted against the McCain-Feingold bill and this has come up before in the budget thing. And these are Democrats who basically ran as moderates, ran against their party. You had said that party identification is important for voter. How does it affect, is it important for Senators — it seems as though there is the opportunity for moderate Democrats to vote with Republicans and get things done. But yet Daschle has been so successful in holding the party together, and now we are seeing there is a 50/50, 50/51 this week. What is the role in the Senate as far as those moderate Democrats and their party?
MR. MANN: This is a case where this is what is different too is we used to just assume Democrats would be the majority party and no one thought about the impact of actions in the Senate on who would be the majority the next time around. But that changed in 1980 and in the House in '94. And now members always have to calculate whether their defection from their party to join the opposition might mean the unraveling of their majority status in the body. I think that has a tremendous impact on both the Democratic and Republican sides in both the Senate and the House. And on those high visibility matters like taxes and the big picture on budget, it tends to overwhelm the ideological disposition of some members in both parties to find agreement. No one likes to cut a deal across party lines more than John Breaux but John Breaux is just deeply offended by George Bush that he decided to follow this strategy and work exclusively from his party. And so Breaux is going to stick with the Democrats on the budget matters until later in the process when there may be more opportunity to build something. I think actually as we move away from the highest visibility, most high-risk, high stakes sort of party battles to pieces of this, then the natural distribution preferences.
MS. ROBERTS: Oh, I think you will see bipartisanship on education and on faith-based institutions and on all that stuff. Sarah, you want to add here?
MS. BINDER: I guess I would just add in that the Senate has this centrist coalition. There is a big thing about how roughly 40 Senators at its first meeting. I have been waiting to count Senators who really show up at the second meeting.
MS. ROBERTS: But also the vote count too.
MS. BINDER: I think when we call them Senate moderates or Democrats moderates, the center is shifting here. There really aren't Senators in that center anymore relative to the types of moderates that we have seen in the past. If you look at John Breaux and you look at his votes over the last Congress or so, the five Congresses or so, he is actually much, much closer to that middle Senate Democrat than he is to the other side. We call him a moderate because he is dealing with the left there, but he is really not in the center. On some issues he will be, on some votes. Taxes, he probably is. But across the board these moderates are much closer to being the mainstream Democrats. It is sort of the same story with Lieberman. The first story during the campaign was, look, he is a centrist, he is a Republican on vouchers. That is an isolated issue. He is really a mainline Democrat, called a moderate sometimes.
MR. LOOMIS: I think that one other thing, I think this whole thing early on, these 50/50 votes or 51/50 are pretty much scripted. They decided to bring the budget up in this way, and I think everybody knew that roughly speaking this is the way it was going to operate. And so I don't think there are many surprises here. But I do think that down the line when you need a 60, then it ends up being issue by issue and you may find the kind of Lieberman individual issue coalition coming together.
MS. ROBERTS: Anybody else?
QUESTION: I personally feel that the personal contact in the legislative process and in relations between countries is extremely important. In business, it is very important. Prevents that from happening. Is there the same sense in either the Senate or the Congress that that is what is happening and maybe there is an attempt to start the first vote on Monday morning.
MS. ROBERTS: You would never see people react so swiftly as they would if somebody told them to have a vote on Monday morning. But there is concern about it but not so as anybody is really willing to admit. The House has had these bipartisan retreats which were mainly at the instigation of a couple of House wives who just couldn't stand it. But they go off on retreat, a few of them, and then come back and misbehave. But I think there are two factors, one is political, that Washington is Sodom and Gomorrah and if you move there, you have fallen into the central pit. But the other is practical. If you have a spouse who works, where is home? Your kids are here in school, if you are here during the week and home for the weekend, is that better, getting to the soccer games and all of that. Or is it better being at the PTA meeting every week. It really is a dilemma, and I think it is a legitimate dilemma for families. It was very different in the old days. Transportation is the enemy here. You couldn't get back and forth, so you didn't.
MR. LOOMIS: I think that Cokie makes — traveling is now such a bugaboo. It seems something to be used against you in the next campaign. And one of the things that Tom mentioned is raising money, the next campaign is almost upon us, so much sooner it seems. And the idea that you could be — possibly go to a foreign country and not be whooping it up but actually being —
MS. ROBERTS: [Inaudible.]
MR. LOOMIS: — or Bolivia, actually learning something. And I think that the side benefit there of being together was tremendous. And so you have a bunch of situations where people were placed side by side.
MS. ROBERTS: I think that has gotten better though in recent years. They are beginning to take trips again and they are not as worried about it as they used to be. Now, here is my proposal here, why don't you see if this would work as a student of the filibuster because we haven't really had a filibuster yet this year. My proposal is they actually have to filibuster and then we might not see so many filibusters. They have to stand up on the floor and filibuster as we have in the olden days.
MS. BINDER: I think there is a lot of merit to it and it may cut down on some of it, in part because of these pressures of being elsewhere. You don't want to spend the night in your house coat in the Senate cloakroom. On the other hand, my sense is, and it is hard to know because majority leaders and minority leaders have too much on their plate for them to want to engage in that strategy. On some issues, yes, it may pay to kind of get it off the agenda by making them stay all night, but they have too much to be done. They are not back in the old days with a very low agenda. Both parties have things they want to get done on the floor and you can assume that night after night in the filibuster, it does detract from the leaders' ability to move on to other issue. So what we see now is a threat of a filibuster, often it pulls the bill off of the floor, and we go on to other pressing priorities. If you didn't have other pressing priorities, then, yes, I think there would be a strategy that that majority leader would be willing to employ. I sense that they may be hesitant to do that.
MS. ROBERTS: Other questions?
QUESTION: Just to first of all because we have been dancing around the idea for a while the idea that this 50/50 is not going to last for a very long time. What kind of changes, what extent and how profound are we going to assume these changes?
MS. ROBERTS: You mean your assumption is that it switches party then?
QUESTION: Well, at some point by 2002, the basic party -- but even if it becomes 51/49 Republican in the next election or if it becomes 51/49 Democrat in the next election.
MR. MANN: Listen, it is in the next couple of weeks, and the Democrats take a 51/49 majority. They would have the right to a single seat majority on committees. And you likely would not see a reporting out of the President's tax and budgetary programs. Since things are so polarized by party, it would at that point make a huge difference and would lead to a set of substantial negotiations much earlier than would otherwise take place. I think that is the biggest difference, when the majority points against the President and the sort of the control of the agenda in the committees. But by and large, in terms of real outcomes apart from the fast track protection of reconciliation and the like, it takes super majorities and you have got to eventually deal with a much wider group of Senators. And when you do, it has some positive effects. It forces serious negotiation and discussion. And, again, we have that finance campaign debate because Democrats picked up seats in the Senate because John McCain got Thad Cochran to join him and he had 60 votes to force a vote. So there is a good side as well.
MS. ROBERTS: This is where your question can come back to bite to Bush. If he should lose the Senate within the next few months, then having done the tax bill in a different fashion can come back to bite him. But that is one of the reasons to rush it through.
MR. MANN: The other thing is at 51/49, 52/48, everyone is still looking at most two years down the road, or usually 18 months or 12 months, because it is so tempting to frame issues to produce a larger majority the next time. And so I think elections still drive things so much, until you get to some other number, I am not sure what that is, obviously, 60 is a key number. But even in the middle fifties you get a different kind of Congress.
MS. ROBERTS: I think that is very right. What we are dealing with these Congresses is the next election immediately because the margins are so close. I thought, Burd, you also brought up a very interesting point about conference committees, which is something we also have not seen yet, which is what is going to happen on conference committees. First of all, we don't even know what the makeup of them is going to be. And, secondly, that is where the real divisions between the House and Senate come to play. Does anybody have any thoughts about what the conference committee is going to look like? No? All right. We know that Tom Daschle would put John McCain on the campaign finance.
MR. MANN: Is it correct that was the one area on which they could not work out agreement in how to share in negotiations.
MS. ROBERTS: Yes.
MR. MANN: And it is very much up for grabs. But you could imagine Mr. Lott being unable to appoint conferees as well. So we could have some real deadlocks.
MS. ROBERTS: One other thing I would say about your question about the Senate changing hands, and it is true about the House too, and it gets back to some of the things we were talking about earlier, even though people might disagree with the President on a single thing, and this is why the game matters because what is the White House argument right now, you have to vote for this bill because it will weaken the President if you don't. But they understand that their power, the majority, the Republican majority understands that their power derives from the President, and that even if they might disagree with him on specifics, then it is worth it to them for him to be strong. And you even saw this with Republicans in the minority when Bush One was President where on bills where they voted one way on the legislation, they would change their votes on a veto override in order to keep him from having a veto overridden. And, in fact, he didn't have a veto overridden until the very end of his presidency and that was on TV cable. It was on something they cared deeply about, cable rates. But that was the first -- it might have been the only, it was the only veto that was overridden. And that was because Republicans in the Congress understood that his strength was important to them. So I think that you will continue to see that.
MR. MANN: Cokie, can I just say one last word about civility because I overstated my case about it being beside the point.
MS. ROBERTS: He is going to be in trouble with the nuns who raised him.
MR. MANN: What they will do to me. What I want to say is it is no substitute for policy concessions and real negotiations and the rest, but it is terribly important to how the body thinks of itself and how the public thinks of the deliberative bodies as well. The American people unfortunately haven't had enough civics education, they didn't have the nuns teaching them about the deliberative process. They tend to be offended when they see politicians disagreeing. They think everything should be consensual. They don't know that they disagree here because they all disagree outside of the country. But to the extent politicians manage to engage in more civil disagreement and debates that are genuinely conflictual exhibit disagreement but sort of respect and respond to one another, then it seems there is a little better chance of the public looking more kindly on that. And that is the reason to care.
MS. ROBERTS: I thank you all for being here. I hope you enjoyed lunch.
[END OF EVENT.]