Congressional Reform is Urgently Needed but Difficult

When the 9/11 Commission issued its public report last year, its criticism of intelligence failures and its recommendations for reforming the executive branch of government drew plenty of news coverage. But few seemed to notice another aspect of reform envisioned by the Commission: the need for Congress to overhaul the way it deals with intelligence and homeland security.

The report itself was quite clear. "Of all our recommendations," it said, "strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important. So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need." The Commission called for fundamentally reshaping and centralizing the congressional committee structure on intelligence and homeland security issues, in order to strengthen both oversight and support of the national security apparatus.

So far, Congress has largely failed to take up the Commission's recommendations. This is unfortunate, but understandable. Government reform is difficult under any circumstances, as the FBI has shown in the years since the September 11 attacks. The Bureau has struggled to change its culture from one of prosecuting cases to one of preventing terrorism. This has demanded more than a wholly new focus and new organizational charts — it has also demanded new methods of hiring, training, and evaluating performance across a sprawling institution. Reform, in other words, essentially means changing the way people do their work, and inertia is a very strong force within large government institutions.

Reforming anything in government is hard because you will be reapportioning power, and reforming Congress is doubly tough, because on Capitol Hill, people are acutely aware of the apportionment of power. In a reform plan such as the 9/11 Commission's, which deals with redistributing the power of congressional committees, power will be added to one committee and taken away from another. Power may not be the only game that counts in Congress, but it's one you can never ignore — it's why a lot of people run for office, and why more people come to work on Capitol Hill. Every congressional leader knows to expect a tenacious fight from anyone whose power is being threatened.

Moreover, reform has to be managed if it is to be effective. The keys to any reform effort are skillful management, effective implementation of a new structure and, above all, people; organizational charts cannot carry out a reform effort, people do. Many on Capitol Hill are superb politicians and insightful policy analysts, but reforms of great magnitude demand that they also be able to communicate their goals, delineate new responsibilities, and put those who are best suited to the new structure in positions to make it work.

Standing by and allowing congressional reform on this matter not to happen will have consequences. Over the last few years, this nation has seen the cost of allowing Congress to fail in its responsibilities for oversight of the executive branch. Congress did not adequately probe pre-war claims regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; it did not educate itself or the American people about how much the Iraq war was going to cost; it played a passive role in uncovering prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, and it has done next to nothing about the misconduct.

On the 9/11 Commission, we found that congressional oversight on terrorism in the years leading up to the attacks was severely deficient. Furthermore, because so much information on intelligence and national security is classified, nobody else can do this oversight: not the media, not academia, not the public. Only the congressional committees charged with the task can do this, and currently they are not capable of doing a good enough job. We are worse off as a nation — and as a democracy — when Congress shirks its duties.

So while reforming the congressional committee structure dealing with intelligence matters may be extremely difficult to carry out, that is not an excuse for ignoring the need. Not when it comes to the safety and security of the American people. The 9/11 Commission was quite blunt about why Congress needs to act: "The other reforms we have suggested…will not work if congressional oversight does not change, too," we wrote. "Unity of effort in executive management can be lost if it is fractured by divided congressional oversight."

We are in danger of just that, and although Congress' inaction is understandable, it is no longer acceptable.

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We Must Reclaim Our Campaigns

It may seem far too early for you to start thinking about next year's congressional elections, but let me assure you that a lot of campaign professionals are already doing so. This should worry you. Let me explain.

Elections are the key to representative democracy. In an election, voters express their preference for candidates and policies, and help set the course for the nation. Yet for some years now, I have been uneasy about the way we conduct elections for Congress. Elections have become enormously complicated events. Candidates hire speechwriters, pollsters, advertising and mass- mailing experts, turn-out-the-vote specialists, event schedulers, and a host of others. Because these elections are for high stakes, cost huge amounts of money, and require prodigious effort, no one wants to take chances.

So candidates' public events are highly structured and often designed to insulate them from detailed discussion of the issues. The result: It is difficult these days to encounter the 'dialogue of democracy' that campaigns are supposed to represent — the chance for citizens to hear candidates talk openly and extensively about their core beliefs or their views on issues, and an opportunity for candidates and citizens to engage one another in debate and discussion. Instead, politicians and their consultants strive for tightly controlled appearances. Their goal is to put the candidate in as favorable a light as possible and an opponent in as unfavorable a light as possible, and to script every moment so that the candidate speaks only about issues that work in his or her favor.

Since most voters get their information from television, in 2004, candidates and their supporters spent $1.6 billion on a medium that may be useful to them, but one which reduces the quality of public discourse by portraying candidates in a simplistic and often inflammatory manner. The result is that voters are often not getting the information they need to make informed judgments. This is not good for our Republic.

It's hard to know what our representatives are actually representing if voters never get the chance to explore the main issues of the day with those who are seeking public office. So how do we voters take our campaigns back? How, in other words, do we break through the cocoon of television ads, radio spots, billboards, campaign literature, and meticulously staged appearances that the candidates are so determined to control?

The key is for voters to demand as much information as possible from the candidates, not necessarily by supplanting current campaign tactics, but by adding events that would equip voters to make informed judgments on the candidates. What we really need are sure-fire ways for political opponents to grapple with each other over the key issues of the day and to respond to the concerns of the voters. Voters should insist that every logical institution in their state or district — including colleges, the League of Women Voters, editorial boards, Lions Clubs, and others — schedule debates, organize forums, host coffees and do whatever else they can to drag candidates into unscripted encounters with the public. By the same token, the press has become far too deferential to the notion that readers and viewers are not interested in the ins and outs of policy.

When Tony Blair was running for re-election as British prime minister earlier this year, he faced a scrum of reporters every day, everywhere he went, grilling him on a bewildering array of subjects. I'll warrant that if American journalists pay that kind of attention to candidates for Congress — testing them, probing for their views, exploring their stands with skepticism and some real analysis — their audiences will follow. Broadcasters might also be urged to air at least five minutes of candidate discourse every night for the month before an election, by presenting a nightly mix of interviews, debates, issue statements, and question-and-answer sessions. In the end, though, responsibility lies with the American voter.

Voters need to insist on useful information so they can make sound judgments about candidates, judgments on which, after all, the future of our democracy depends. If we do everything we can to ask hard questions of our candidates, if we go to those debates, forums and coffees prepared to engage with those who would represent us and to insist on answers, we can take the election process back into our own hands. If we demand more of ourselves, our politicians will have no choice but to follow, and the Republic will be better for it.

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