Congress Should Use Its Muscles

For those who pay attention to power and its uses, it has been clear for some time that the White House is engaged in an unprecedented bid to expand the reach of the executive branch and to alter the "balance of powers" on which our system has long depended. The Bush administration has pushed to the limit the doctrine of the inherent powers of the President to take actions without the involvement of Congress.

Curiously, it has not acted alone. Congress has been a willing partner in this assertion of presidential power at its own — and the American people's — expense. So, while it is encouraging that Congress in recent months has finally shown some signs of pushing back and placing limits on executive authority, we must hope it sees fit to do more.

These stirrings of congressional will have often come when the wind of popular opinion has been blowing the same way.

So, for instance, Congress reacted strongly to the administration's approval of a business deal that would have given ownership of major U.S. ports to a Dubai holding company. And in the wake of revelations about administration-approved domestic spying, the intelligence committees have undertaken somewhat more robust oversight of intelligence efforts.

Similarly, revelations about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq strengthened congressional resolve to look closely at administration policies regarding torture.

The House has also been willing on occasion to stake out territory that clearly puts it at odds with the White House, as it has done recently on immigration legislation and, for better or worse, on the FBI's search of Rep. William Jefferson's office. Of course, with the President's poll ratings so low, it is much easier to show some backbone.

Yet, while it is notable that Congress is showing a measure of independence, there is still a lot that Congress is not doing. It is not looking with a critical eye at the President's budget proposals or calling his spending priorities into serious question. It is not issuing subpoenas to administration officials in an effort to explore decisions — from the prosecution of the Iraq War to the political manipulation of basic science — that many Americans find troubling.

It is not holding systematic, robust oversight hearings. It is not calling in agency heads, rigorously questioning them, and suggesting that their funding could suffer if they continue to treat legislators as mere nuisances.

A Congress that was serious about exercising its prerogatives would have administration officials on Capitol Hill every day, asking tough questions on all kinds of topics, grilling them on their policy decisions and investigating how they'd chosen to implement federal programs.

For the truth is, Congress has long been supine in the face of presidential assertions of authority and denial of information, making the vision of government laid out by our Founders barely recognizable today.

It has by and large stood by as the Bush administration has insisted on formulating public policy with minimal congressional input; on restricting access to presidential papers; on increasing the number of classified documents and decreasing the number declassified; on setting aside or bypassing laws and treaties; on ignoring Congress in developing policy on how to treat detainees or conduct national surveillance programs or secretly gather banking records; on using "signing statements" to do an end run around congressional intent; and on sometimes refusing to allow presidential aides to testify before Congress.

Let's be clear. I am not suggesting that the presidency should be weakened; rather, that Congress should be strengthened.

The theory of government on which our Constitution rests is that the needs of a democratic society are best served when there is tension and strong interaction between the two policy-making branches of government. When Congress and the presidency are both vigorous, assertive institutions that are constantly testing each other, the policy our government produces and its accountability to the people it serves are more robust.

As John Adams wrote in 1787 of what were to become the House, the Senate and the presidency, "Without three divisions of power, stationed to watch each other, and compare each other's conduct with the laws, it will be impossible that the laws should at all times preserve their authority and govern all men."

Congress has shown some stirrings of self-respect, and that is positive. But to serve the American people — to ensure that we are, indeed, a nation of laws — it needs to forget its timidity and be far more assertive. This would not be disrespectful of the President. Rather, it would be living up to the expectations of the men who created our government.

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What Will It Take to Improve the Dialogue of Democracy?

As this election season gets underway with its television ads, debates and non-stop campaigning, I've been struck by something I keep hearing as I talk to people about our political system: They're disappointed.

Generally, election years are hopeful times, but people now are sour not just about this year's elections, but about politics in general. They're unhappy with the quality of the political discourse they hear: in House and Senate debates, in comments from our elected leaders, in arguments on the campaign trail. The dialogue of democracy is not measuring up to their expectations.

They have lobbying reform, rewriting the nation's telecommunications laws, energy legislation, health-care measures, and revitalizing the nation's emergency management system — ideally, before hurricane season starts on June 1.

In part, this is fed by the public's weariness with the partisan, vituperative, posturing, blame-fixing- or blame-ducking- nature of much of what passes now for political conversation. People feel taken for granted and manipulated, as though their leaders, along with the pollsters and consultants they rely on, see them as little more than a series of little hot buttons to be pushed or suppressed.

But there's more to it than that. Americans are missing a sense of really serious engagement by our political leaders with the difficult issues that face us; they don't see politicians grappling with them in thoughtful ways, nor do they feel challenged by their political leaders.

It is hard, watching recent presidential campaigns and listening to the latest crop of statements from this party leader or that, not to think back to events like the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which two great minds wrestled with the problem of slavery and all of its nuances over seven appearances together. Or to remember that our founders, for all their skills as practitioners of the political arts, also addressed the political challenges of the day with intellectual brilliance, competing for public support both as politicians and as thinkers about how their new democracy ought to work.

There is very little to compare with such substance in the contemporary political dialogue. Too often now, politicians flit from one topic to the next, brushing over three or four issues at a go. They may feel strongly about these issues, even passionately, but it's hard to escape the sense that everything they say has been focus-group-tested to within an inch of its life. Their speeches, which you'd think would give them a chance to explore matters in depth, often lack serious content or evidence of deep thought.

Instead, they are filled with sound bites carefully crafted to make it onto the evening news, and with much tut-tutting about the problem but precious little about the solution.

There is a cost to this, and we all pay it. Pollster Richard Harwood has been talking to Americans since the early 1990s about their feelings about public discourse. What he has found is unsettling. "People cannot find in the current public realm a sustained force for truth-seeking and the promotion of the public good," he wrote recently. "Noticeably missing is a sense of possibility and hope. In their place stands a politics and public life driven by manipulation, personal positioning, and material gain."

A key and disturbing result of this, he believes, is that many Americans have simply given up on participating actively in public life, retreating into their own lives in search of some sense of normalcy, control and, I suspect, truth.

The result is that most of the people we send to Congress have little input into what comes out of it. Moreover, the late Tuesday afternoon-to-Thursday schedule that members of Congress now keep prevents them from discharging one of the most vital duties our Constitution gives them: carrying out robust oversight of the executive branch. It's not too much to think that a Congress that had the time and the inclination to look over the President's shoulder might have led to more judicious decision-making on everything from Abu Ghraib to domestic spying to the Dubai ports deal.

So what can we do about this?

First off, I believe that we should expect disagreement, vigorous debate, and even passion. We face very tough public policy problems as a nation, and the more points of view that grapple with them, the better. I realize that a segment of the American public is uneasy in the presence of discord and controversy. But these are natural parts of a democracy that is working.

Robust debate is healthy. Competition for power lies at the heart of our system, and an intense struggle for votes that is marked by the clashing of ideas, respect for the facts and a certain humility is to be encouraged, not feared.

This is true, however, only if it is carried on under certain rules. Healthy debate is characterized by the collision of strongly held views, of course, but also by politeness, graciousness, respect for one's adversary, reasonableness, tolerance, and a basic integrity. It is also marked by a search for pragmatic solutions, consensus, and the public good.

When the next set of attack ads appears on your television screen, remember that. How public discourse is conducted makes all the difference in the quality and effectiveness of governing.

So now is the time to act. As in all things in a democratic government, it is up to us as voters to make it clear to politicians if we are dissatisfied with how they carry on the public debate. Attacks and negative advertising work only because we allow them to. But if you let your politicians know that you don't like excessive partisanship, superficiality or name calling, and that you want to hear about solutions, not just a statement of the problem, they will hear you.

I think it's probably too much to expect our political leaders to reach the heights that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln or Stephen Douglas did. But it is not too much for us to expect them to try.

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