Politicians Need To Find A Balance

For most of my career I've been a firm believer in the political arts, first as a member of Congress and now as an observer of politicians. The ability to read the mood of an electorate, an aptitude for building consensus among competing interests, a gift for finding just the right tack for eliciting people's agreement - these talents are indispensable to making Congress and our democracy work.

Yet lately I've wondered whether politics as we practice it today is working as well as it should. In some ways, politicians are acting too much like politicians for the country's good.

To understand this, let's step back for a moment and remember the difference between a representative democracy, which is the system we live in, and a straight-out, direct democracy. As it is now, we elect people to represent us and to make decisions about the issues confronting us that, ideally, will make ours a better and stronger nation. If we lived in a pure democracy, we'd be making those decisions ourselves.

Any politician will tell you there is a great deal of wisdom and common sense to be found in the American electorate. Yet we live in a representative democracy for a reason: the men who designed our system wanted to reserve a place for deliberation, study, and thoroughgoing argument. They worried that popular majorities could be swayed by the passions of the moment or by sheer self-interest, rather than by carefully reasoned debate about where the best interests of the country might lie.

Fast-forward to today, and you'll notice that while we still live in a representative democracy, our representatives too often seem to be guided by polls of their constituents or by the desires of the interests with which they most closely identify.

There are times when it seems as though the one thing our system was designed to ensure - that our representatives would think hardest about what's good for the country as they weigh the issues before them - is the last thing on their minds.

Indeed, politicians appear to be obsessed with every nuance of public opinion and the needs and desires of the various interests that fund their campaigns. True, it's how they get elected and then re-elected, but it also sets up an unhealthy political dynamic. Those running for office tend to advance policy ideas that promise them electoral victory; they give answers that are carefully calibrated to appeal to the politics of the moment, pushing the country's long-term interests aside; and so they give in to partisanship and give less attention to negotiation, bargaining, and compromise.

American voters, accustomed to having politicians cater to their desires, let their personal interests dictate the kind of government they want to see and so become ever more dependent on Washington while professing to despise politicians for pandering to them.

Surely we can do better.

What we need are politicians who understand their responsibility both to reflect the popular will and to educate and lead the public - who, in essence, recognize that in a representative democracy, the people elect them to use their judgment and steer by their own convictions.

Good politicians see their job as building consensus for pragmatic and effective policies through deliberation and accommodation; they are not simple weather vanes, shifting this way or that according to the views contained in the latest polls or the advice of their favorite political consultant.

We hear much today in politics about the search for "authenticity" in political candidates; this, I believe, is a reflection of Americans' desire for political leaders who understand that while good leadership begins with listening, it cannot end there.

Getting the balance right between reflecting the views of the American people and allowing for the judgment and skill of the elected representative is difficult. But it is hard for me to imagine that a politician who focuses on what is best for our country can go too far wrong. A clash of enlightened politicians who are determined to find remedies that serve the public good will almost certainly produce better policy than politicians who view their job as mirroring the latest polls or the positions of special-interest constituencies. The challenge for American voters is to know the difference, and reward the former rather than the latter.

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Congress Must Assert Itself

To the casual observer, Congress must seem unusually pushy these days. Its Democratic majority is tussling with the White House over the budget. Senators are investigating the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes. The House Oversight Committee has accused the White House of systematically impeding scientific inquiry into global warming. And hearings into past administration behavior - from wiretaps to doings at the Justice Department - continue. Aren't those politicians on Capitol Hill going a little overboard, you might wonder?

The short answer is: no. Not even close.

This is not a partisan comment about Democrats and Republicans. It's about the relationship between Capitol Hill and the White House, and how important it is to our system that each - the presidency and the Congress - be a strong and vibrant institution.

To understand why, let's start with the vision for our democracy as laid out in the Constitution. What the Founders sought above all was balance - between large states and small, minority rights and majority rule, the executive power and the legislative.

To keep the President from becoming too powerful, they not only created an equally powerful Congress, they explicitly gave it authority - to declare war, to enact taxes, to set the budgetary agenda - designed to ensure that consultation, debate, and the voices of the American people would all have a prominent place in the halls of power.

They did not want an unchecked Congress. They believed that the interaction between two powerful branches of government would be broadly responsive to the people, and the balance between each branch would produce better policy.

Yet over the last few decades, on issue after issue, Congress has slowly but inexorably ceded its constitutionally mandated responsibilities to the President. Presidents of both parties have sought and encouraged this trend, although it has accelerated under President Bush, who has pursued a definition of executive power more all-encompassing than that of any of his predecessors.

Perhaps the most vivid example of this overall shift in power lies in the weightiest decision a government has to make: whether to go to war against another country. The Constitution unequivocally grants this authority to Congress, and it does so for a reason - our Founders wanted the decision to be made not by one person, but by many.

In case after case since the Korean conflict, however, Congress has essentially handed off war-making power to the President, and presidents have been only too eager to accept it. The constitutional injunction - the Congress shall have the power to declare war - has become a nullity. In the popular mind as well as in practice, war has become a presidential prerogative.

Similarly, Congress has over the last few decades grown increasingly sluggish when it comes to budgeting - that is, creating the basic blueprint for what our government will do. Not only has it ceded the initiative to the President, who submits the budget while Congress merely responds, but it has repeatedly failed to come up with its own clear vision for government spending; the President determines well over 90 percent of the federal budget year after year, while Congress gets to tinker on the margins.

And only four times in the last 30 years has Congress passed all its appropriations bills on time, which greatly strengthens the President's hand, as is apparent at the end of every budget year.

War and the budget are not the only arenas in which Congress has effectively relinquished its agenda-setting role. On everything from the fight against terror to international trade to protecting the environment, and a host of other issues, the President and executive branch have become the driving forces in American governance. Congress, though not entirely supine, has been content to let the President take the political heat for actually leading.

To be sure, the world our nation faces is vastly different from the one our Founders confronted or could even envision in 1789. In a difficult world, an increase in presidential power is appropriate. But a timid Congress is not. A Congress that reasserts its prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government, that insists on robust oversight of the executive branch, that sets its own agenda as well as responds to the agenda of the President, that exercises the powers given it by our Constitution when it comes to declaring war and deciding how the government will spend its money - this would not be a Congress that weakens the President, but rather one that strengthens our democracy.

All it would take would be for members of Congress to muster the political will and confidence to do what their office requires them to do: uphold and defend the Constitution.

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Why Politics Is So Partisan

On the whole, Americans want their politicians to hew to the political center and govern with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Yet we live in the most bitterly partisan era in memory, when the dominant voices in both parties are more ideological and less willing to compromise, and the politics they practice too often is a mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners enterprise.

How could this gap between Americans' moderate inclinations and their leaders' tendentious zeal have grown so large?

A large part of the answer lies in long-term social changes that have weakened the political center. We may be moderate in the aggregate, but those who involve themselves in political life often give strength to the extremes.

Take the shift over the past generation in how we view the government. When I entered national politics in the 1960s, the prevailing attitude toward the federal government was that it had its place in life, but that place was fairly limited. "Keep the government off my back" was the sentiment I heard most frequently.

These days, people want help: a subsidy here, a tax break there, a program or a grant targeted to their needs. They come streaming into Washington to state their case.

That is a huge attitudinal shift, and it has intensified our politics and raised the stakes in Congress. A change in wording, even a comma inserted or deleted, can mean millions or billions of dollars to one group over another. Small wonder that lobbying has become a huge and lucrative industry inside the Beltway: With so much at stake, fighting as hard as one can on Capitol Hill and in the electoral arena is a matter of simple self-interest.

Outside Washington, the constituencies that make up "we, the people" have become ever more sharply etched. Ethnic minorities are far more of a presence in politics than they were a generation ago, as they scramble to move up the economic ladder and speak with a louder voice in the political arena.

Special-interest voters — environmentalists, NRA backers, abortion-rights advocates, religious conservatives — have become more firmly self-identified, rousable by cause groups, and catered to by politicians.

And as economic inequality grows, it raises the political temperature. Those who are doing well fight harder to keep what they have or tilt the game a bit more in their favor, while those treading water or living in fear of losing what they've got must scramble desperately for whatever political purchase they can find. All of this raises the nation's political intensity.

Confronted by all this, politicians and party leaders have moved away from the old values of compromise, accommodation and civility, to reap whatever advantage they can from political division. This starts at the very top. Most past presidents believed in using their office to expand their political base; President Bush, on the other hand, has governed so as to appeal to his base, and for the last seven years that approach has been echoed on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Legislative tactics these days lean far more toward excluding the minority than toward seeking ways to work with all members. This makes Congress an increasingly angry place, as the current minority chafes under its restrictions and the majority still sees red over slights it suffered when it was in the minority.

Along with the frenetic pace of life in Congress, this has made it much harder for members to develop personal relationships across the aisle; they see one another less as colleagues than as partisan adversaries. They worry less about how Congress might carry out its constitutional responsibilities and more about how to pick up a few votes. All of this is magnified by a national media that thrives on highlighting the battles between politicians.

The key question, of course, is whether this is bound to continue. Are we condemned to live in a country whose center cannot hold?

The answer, I think, is two-fold. Our politicians like to talk bi-partisanship, but they are the ones ultimately responsible for the polarization of the process. They've profited from the partisan system: in campaign contributions, the assiduous attention of lobbyists, and the increased power of their partisan bases as Americans in the center get turned off and abandon political involvement altogether. Nothing will change until our politicians change.

And how will this happen? I take great hope from the fact that the bulk of the electorate simply wants to see the challenges that confront them — and us, as a nation — addressed pragmatically. They want common-sense approaches, not ideologically driven ones. They want to see politicians striving to find common ground, not dwelling on their differences, and working for the common good, not promoting special interests. Eventually, if it's repeated often and firmly enough, that message will get through to our political leaders.

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Why Not Try Genuine Consultation?

Congress and President Bush often do not see eye to eye, but does Washington need to be paralyzed as a result? Two recent dramas - a face-off over appropriations measures and Congress's failure to override the President's veto of children's health insurance legislation - bring that question into prominence.

In the first instance, the President vetoed a series of water projects passed by Congress, only to see his veto resoundingly overridden in both the House and the Senate; he then vetoed another appropriations bill, and threatens more such actions in the future. The conflict over the Democratic majority's bid to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, which has so far been blocked by the White House, also continues.

Disagreements over policy between the White House and Congress are inevitable. But they need not end in these all-or-nothing battles, which too often result in nothing accomplished to advance public policy. Governing well is not about hammering at the other side until it relents; it's about working hard to find whatever common ground is possible. Real consultation and negotiation between Congress and the White House is scarce, at least for now.

In the case of children's health legislation, members of Congress from both parties worked throughout the spring and summer to craft a bill that could become law with the President's signature, only to see it attacked by the President before they had even finished. White House aides contend that the Democratic majority is interested only in scoring political points in next year's elections; members of Congress counter that the White House has never truly engaged with them to create a measure the President could sign.

Meanwhile, as the appropriations process wears on, further stalemates are in the offing. Democrats may have won their override on the water projects bill, but that was low-hanging fruit, since even the most fiscally conservative member of Congress would have a hard time opposing money for a badly needed project back home. Future measures will be much harder to enact.

Facing the prospect of a continued standstill in Washington, both sides might want to take a step back and think about what running the country entails. It's possible that relations between this President and this Congress are so noxious they'll be unable to govern, but I'd like to suggest that with both sides' poll standings at record lows, it can't hurt to consider the American people's obvious hunger for progress.

The key point about governing and consultation between the two branches of government is that it has to be a sincere effort to consult and work with the other branch in the decision-making process. It doesn't work for the President and his advisers to call the congressional leadership in, announce a decision that has already been made, and call that "consultation." It's equally unproductive for a congressional majority to gamble that it will be rewarded in the court of electoral opinion for excluding White House input into its bills.

To bridge the differences, there must be a very strong will to succeed. What's needed is a process that creates an ongoing relationship - not just one created to deal with an immediate crisis - that builds trust among the various players, recognizes there are always alternatives in policy disputes, and allows key negotiators to sit down and talk long before decisions are made.

This works not just to both sides' political advantage, it usually produces better policy for the American people. I'm reminded, for instance, of the intensive negotiations between Secretary of State George Marshall and Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan that produced the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of postwar Europe, despite the general state of suspicion between the Republican-held Congress and Democratic President Harry S Truman's White House.

Or President George H. W. Bush's efforts to convince a dubious Congress to allocate large amounts of financial aid to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the fall of communism; rather than try to bludgeon Congress into going along, he involved Congress in designing the aid programs. Or the long, tedious, contentious discussion on just about any major piece of legislation, from welfare reform to Medicare to aid to education, that has characterized our advances in public policy.

By its nature, Congress represents the American people's diversity and articulates their concerns. Faced with a Congress controlled by the opposition, a President cannot get what he wants by flexing his muscle alone, but he can knit together a majority to generate public support. And only rarely can Congress hope to enact policy over the President's veto; it cannot change the course of American policy without him.

So the two branches need to work with, not against, one another if they're to govern effectively. Consultation is hardly a confession of political weakness: It's a pragmatic recognition that in our system, the two branches need to talk to one another. If they can't, they produce only stalemate in Washington and public disgust in the country at large. Surely, the President and the leadership in Congress want to leave a better legacy than that.

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The Path to Good Citizenship

"My job is to make the country work, and help it to come together." I don't remember the name of the young woman who said that, but I certainly remember the circumstances. It was at a high school in the southern Indiana congressional district I once represented. As a member of Congress, you get asked regularly to speak at high schools, and I always tried to comply.

I also tried to meet with small groups of students beforehand to talk about what being an American meant to them. I was especially interested in how they saw the responsibilities of citizenship - and in particular, whether they saw dimensions to it that went beyond simply voting.

It has been a while since I made visits like these. Those young people have grown up and, I'm sure, forgotten our conversations. I still think about their comments, however. I do not want to suggest they were typical; indeed they were not. That's one reason their statements have stayed with me for years. Then, too, they were so young - most of them couldn't even vote - yet displayed none of the disconnection or apathy that we so commonly attribute to teenagers.

Some, for instance, were focused on their own road forward. "My job is for me to become the best I can be," one student said, while another added, "Mine is to overcome all the obstacles, and succeed." Both reflected not only the opportunities this country affords its residents, but the obligation this imposes on us to take advantage of them despite the challenges we sometimes encounter. "My job is to have a good, decent, hard-working family," said another - a purely personal goal, in one sense, but a boon to society in another.

Other students thought of their responsibilities in what amounted to moral terms. "My responsibility is to do the right thing, always," one told me, while another was determined "to respect everyone, get along with them, treat them decently, work with them, and try to help them." This emphasis on integrity and generosity of spirit acknowledged that how we behave toward others is also a part of good citizenship - that sometimes, doing the right thing can reverberate throughout a community.

Much of the time, the young people I spoke with thought of citizenship in broad terms. They'd obviously pondered what it meant to be a citizen of their own towns, their nation or even the world. They talked about "making my town and my neighborhood better, and improving them in any way I can," as one put it. They spoke about having "been given a marvelous country, and it is our job to pass it on better than we found it."

They talked, too, about their responsibility as U.S. citizens to promote this country's strengths elsewhere: "My job," one said, "is to help keep the country free - and to share that freedom with others." And they saw a role for themselves not just in political terms, but in environmental ones, speaking of their obligation to "protect the earth: the water, soil and air," as one said.

These sentiments were often couched in simple terms, but they expressed complex ideas. In particular, they took it as a given that part of being a citizen is building on the strengths or doing all one can to reverse the shortfalls of the communities and the nation they lived in.

Not only did their comments show real insight into our democracy, they brought home a crucial point: There is no single path to good citizenship. These students all saw different ways of being a citizen, and I don't think it's over-reaching to say that our country thrives because it gives us all the chance to interpret our place in it in our own fashion. Those who work hard and focus on raising a family or on becoming experts in their field contribute just as surely as those who tutor in schools, organize rallies to fight some injustice or volunteer to protect U.S. interests abroad. Indeed, as a society we depend on multiple interpretations of what makes for good citizenship.

Every time I left one of these high-school gatherings, I felt reinvigorated and reassured. For what came home to me time after time as I talked with those students was that we would face a grim future indeed if they weren't thinking about citizenship at all.

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