Is Congress Truly Representative?

Now that the mid-term elections are over, the pundits and the politicians are having a field day parsing the results and deciding what the voting really meant. Inevitably, they're talking about this as an "historic" shift. Yet while the results may seem dramatic, a step back reveals that the congressional elections process has become stultified. It no longer reflects the views of the American people as accurately as it should.

Why do I say this? Well, what else can we make of an election in which polls consistently showed massive unhappiness with the Congress, and yet the final numbers appear to be that fewer than 30 seats in the House (out of 435) and 6 in the Senate (out of 33) shifted party hands? The strongest throw-the-bums-out mood in over a decade yielded change in only 7 percent of the seats in play on Election Day. If this year's elections were a massive rebuff to Congress, why are the overwhelming majority of its incumbents coming back?

To answer that, let me start with a brief refresher on Congress. Over the years, one of its major strengths — at least in the House — has been its representative character. For the better part of our history as a nation, the people elected to the House broadly represented the people in their districts, and elections were meant to reflect change in the public mood.

In a country as remarkably diverse as ours, the interests and perspectives of a rural, farming community in Indiana found expression in Congress just as thoroughly as inner-city neighborhoods in New York, suburbs of high-tech workers in California, and the rugged individualists of Montana or Wyoming. And changes in the public mood, great or small, would be reflected in the make-up of the Congress, especially the House.

In a general sense, this is still true. On most days, you wouldn't confuse a representative from the Upper West Side in Manhattan with one from Montana or Georgia. Yet as changes relating to the election of members of Congress have made it increasingly difficult to dislodge incumbents, the result has been a House that does not register changes in the public mood as accurately as it was meant to.

The outsized importance of campaign fundraising, the crucial role that money plays in determining elections, the ability of computers to craft congressional districts that give a strong edge to one party or another — all have added to the advantages already possessed by incumbents, making it extremely difficult to dislodge them.

As a result, it has become less and less clear whether Congress is capable of representing the shifting moods and concerns of American voters. It took a year like this one, when scandals, an unpopular war, and doubts about the congressional majority's ability to govern responsibly combined to produce change reflective of the national mood.

But these tidal waves in public opinion don't come along very often. The truth is, few incumbents of either party today face serious risk of defeat, and many congressional districts have become safe for one party or the other. Well over 90 percent of House members who run again get re-elected, often without much effort.

Well, you might ask, if voters want to keep re-electing incumbents, then why should it matter? I'll tell you why.

To begin with, a safe incumbent feels no particular pressure to gauge opinion throughout his or her district; what counts is the core constituency, the so-called "base." This means that over the years, members of the House have become less inclined to work hard at representing the entire district, since they don't need to in order to get re-elected.

Instead, their positions and initiatives reflect the concerns of the active core that selects the party nominee; in the House, they drift toward the center only when they must.

Just as troubling, while incumbents in safe districts may be just as assiduous as their less secure colleagues in going after federal grants and sorting out Medicare tangles for their constituents, they tend not to keep their ear as close to the ground to pick up the always-changing attitudes of voters.

Mid-term elections used to be a powerful indicator of the public mood, but unless it's a truly extraordinary year like this one, most individual contests won't be competitive. This, in turn, means that voters have less of a chance to weigh the policy direction they'd prefer and then signal their choice by sending one or another candidate to Washington.

This year's election may prove me wrong about the declining representative character of the Congress, but I don't think so. Most elections these days simply ratify the incumbent. The public's opportunity to express its views on the country's direction is diminished.

And when you factor in other forces that drive a wedge between members of Congress and their constituents — the constant fundraising, hectic schedules, and intense pressure to remain loyal to the party — it seems to me that the Congress, designed to be a sensitive barometer of Americans' concerns and preoccupations, grows more distant from the people it is supposed to represent.

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