What It Means To Be A Representative

One of the hardest jobs of an elected representative is learning how to represent a diverse constituency. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton explains "What It Means To Be A Representative."

Compared to what it looked like a couple of decades ago, Congress today is a far more representative body. It's true that, as Congressional Quarterly recently pointed out, the House and Senate are still "populated mainly by wealthy white men with advanced degrees and backgrounds in law and business." Yet Capitol Hill undeniably looks more like the American people than in the past.

It has more women than ever before, for instance — 90 all told. It has a mix of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. It has its first member of Vietnamese descent, and it's likely that its ethnic diversity will grow with each election. It has members who grew up in families with very little, and members who have never known a day of want.

Yet "representation" in Congress takes place at two levels. The first is what most people think of when they talk about how well Congress reflects the nation, the sort of tallying by category I've done above: gender, ethnic or racial background, and the like. The less common, but no less important, way of looking at it has to do with how well individual members actually represent their districts or states: not in terms of their looks or background, but in terms of their actions.

One of the most memorable aspects of the years I spent as a representative in Congress was the astounding cross-section of people I met in my district. I'm hard-pressed to think of another job that could have exposed me to such an array of classes, occupations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, political philosophies, and cultural preferences. Districts and states vary, of course, and some are more homogeneous than others. Yet there isn't a constituency in the country that doesn't call on its member of Congress to reach out to people of wildly different backgrounds and outlook.

This is not always easy. We all instinctively like or dislike people, in part based on the snap judgments we make when we first meet or even see them. Yet that is a burden the best politicians learn to get over quickly, and not just because they want to get elected.

For in the end, the job of representative isn't just to speak for the people with whom one feels comfortable. It's to strive to understand and represent everyone in a constituency. This is, interestingly enough, one of the more bracing aspects of the job: you invariably learn something about ways of looking at the world from people who think differently from you; you also learn that, for the most part, their motives are as sincere as your own. As it happens, this is all good training for being a legislator: listening to other points of view and searching for common ground is part and parcel of being effective in Washington.

Still, paying close attention to the diverse views of a constituency is one of the most difficult aspects of the job. The challenge, of course, is how to reconcile all those conflicting views with one another. As an elected representative, you often ask yourself what your obligation should be to people who don't agree with you — a good many of whom will probably be working to defeat you in the next election. Clearly, you can't violate your own core beliefs; nor can you hope to give voice to every nuance you find in your district. As a representative, though, you can work hard to understand them better; you can search for points they have in common with one another and with you; you can explain why you differ from them; and you can strive at least to acknowledge the positions you do respect, even if you don't agree with them.

Just as important, you can make sure that you never let policy disagreements get in the way of the rest of the job — making sure lost Social Security checks get found, veterans' benefits get paid, and other ways of running interference with the federal bureaucracy are pursued.

As a politician, you quickly learn that it's impossible to satisfy everyone. There will always be someone in a crowd who, when you approach, refuses to shake your hand.

Yet your job, both as a politician and as a representative, isn't to satisfy everyone: it's to satisfy most people. It's to listen carefully, carry what you hear back home to Washington and express it, explain what you hear in Washington to people back home, and, more than anything else, allow the small slice of the American people you represent to feel that there is someone in Washington doing his or her level best to give them a voice.

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In Congress, Change Is A Constant

Congress may not seem to change much from year to year, but in fact it is an evolving institution, and not always for the better, says former Congressman Lee Hamilton.

We think of Congress as immutable, a steadfast presence in American life since its first session in 1789. The inspiration we draw from the dome of the Capitol, the pull of a congressional hearing we know will change the course of history, the lofty statements on the floor of the House or Senate — these were as much a part of our grandparents' time as they are of ours.

Yet after watching Congress carefully for nearly 45 years, I am struck as much by how it has changed as by how much has endured. In everything from where power lies and how it is wielded, to the procedures for running the institution, to how members like to operate, the Congress today is a different body from the one I joined in 1965.

The most significant change has been its steady yielding of power to the White House. Our democracy was built on the core notion that the Congress, the President, and the judiciary would serve to check and balance one another. Yet there is no question today where the national agenda — from budget-making to the use of force — gets set. In deferring so often to the President, I believe, Congress has become a much less powerful actor in the American system of government than the founders intended and a well-functioning representative democracy requires.

Power within Congress has shifted, too. The leadership — especially the majority leadership in both houses — has consolidated its hold on the institution with ever larger staffs and budgets, making it harder for other voices to be heard. Not coincidentally, the influence of campaign money, and therefore of those who raise it and those who determine where it will be spent, has taken on vastly greater importance than it held four decades ago. So, too, has the presence and influence of lobbyists, leading many Americans to feel that they have no real voice in the policy-making process.

Even so, Americans' relationship with Congress has changed in many ways for the better. Though the average member of Congress represents about 200,000 more people today than he or she did in the 1960s, Congress today better reflects the diversity of America. It includes more women, more members of racial and ethnic minorities, more people with different backgrounds. Congress is also a more open institution: Its proceedings are televised, its votes are widely published, its activities — especially in this day of instant communications — more readily scrutinized.

Still, this openness has its drawbacks. Televising congressional hearings and debate has led to more grandstanding and greater use of celebrities by advocacy groups hoping to draw attention, diminishing the quality of deliberation and most likely contributing to a rise in partisanship as members play to their political bases.

There are other dynamics at work, such as the declining competitiveness of congressional districts, work schedules that provide members fewer opportunities to get to know one another, and the overall weakening of the political center in the U.S., but the results are striking to someone who knew Congress four decades ago: It is more open, but also less civil, less friendly, and more intensely political now.

It is also more pressured. Congress confronts issues of a complexity that was unimaginable a few decades ago: global warming, terrorism, cyberwarfare, the spread of nuclear weapons, a vastly more complex and interwoven global economy. It must also respond to an electorate and a set of special interests that see much more at stake in its actions than they did when I arrived and are skillful at pressing those interests on legislators.

Where the general attitude toward Washington once was "get off my back," now there is intense pressure on Congress to "get government on my side," whether through tax breaks, subsidies, or regulatory favoritism.

So it's hardly surprising that Congress now operates differently, short-circuiting the "regular order," relying on omnibus funding bills, and compressing the work week as leaders seek to control the outcome and avoid drawn-out debate. This has fed a drop in deliberation and in the quality of congressional debate, creating a more frenetic, less thoughtful and systematic body. To be sure, individual members can still lead their colleagues on both sides of the aisle through a thorough consideration of one issue or another, but those instances stand out as exceptions now, not the rule.

In other words, Congress may still be our indispensable institution, the place that makes this country a representative democracy, but it also an institution that continues to evolve, in ways both good and bad. It is under great stress at a time of national need. The challenge is to make it work better. Our representative democracy depends on it.

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Can Congress Cope With The Communications Age?

The communications revolution has presented Congress with an ironic problem: how to ensure that messages to and from constituents get heard. Former Congressman Lee Hamilton wonders, "Can Congress Cope With The Communications Age?"

When I first came to Congress in the 1960s, dialogue between members of Congress and their constituents was straightforward. Every so often, a lawmaker would get interviewed on radio or television. Many sent monthly newsletters to the folks back home. They responded to letters, fielded and made telephone calls, and met as often as possible with the people who had sent them to Washington. It was by no means a perfect system — unless they made extraordinary efforts, legislators were often in touch with a smaller cross-section of the population than they should have been — but it worked tolerably well and was readily managed.

Today, something very like the opposite situation prevails: lawmakers are deluged by e-mail messages from constituents and grassroots lobbying campaigns; they can be in touch with millions of people at the press of a "send" button or via a quick upload to YouTube; they can blog about their experiences on the floor of the House, hold videoconferences or telephone town meetings with people back home, and Twitter their thoughts to followers any time of the day or night.

The technology allowing communications between ordinary Americans and their elected representatives, in other words, is superb. Yet for all the words that flow back and forth between Capitol Hill and the country at large, it's not at all clear how much actual dialogue is taking place.

Part of this is a function of sheer volume. As the Congressional Management Foundation wrote in a 2008 report after surveying ordinary citizens and lawmakers and their staffs about their use of the Internet, "[T]echnological developments have been so rapid that neither citizens and the organizers of grassroots advocacy campaigns (the senders) nor congressional offices (the receivers) have learned to use it in ways that facilitate truly effective communications between citizens and Members of Congress. As a result, while more messages are being sent to Congress, it seems less actual communication is occurring."

The survey found that no one is happy with the situation: Hill staffers feel overwhelmed, while almost half the people who wrote to Congress and received a reply were dissatisfied with the response and almost two-thirds believed their representatives "were not interested in what they have to say."

Let's be clear about what's at stake here. A representative democracy depends on the give-and-take between lawmakers and those they represent. When that discourse breaks down — whether it's because high-rolling campaign donors drown out ordinary voters, or because changing technology overwhelms the ability of congressional offices to understand and represent public sentiment adequately — then it threatens the legitimacy of the system.

This presents a true challenge for Congress. Where the White House under President Obama has shown that it can use the Internet and social networking tools to mobilize a political base, it is largely a one-way street; no one expects a quick reply from the President to a letter or a text message. Congress is different. It is the tribune of the American people and we treat it accordingly: we not only expect two-way communications, we need them. That's how the system is supposed to work.

In this period of transition to the new technologies, there are some promising signs. A few members of Congress have learned to make effective use of blogs, Facebook and even Twitter to stay in touch with constituents; the House and Senate both have channels on YouTube now, and though they're mostly filled with the equivalent of video press releases, I have no doubt that legislators will figure out more compelling ways to use them. Meanwhile, the Congressional Management Foundation, after a decade of study, is working to convene congressional staff and grassroots advocates to develop ways to aggregate, verify, and manage online communications, so that Capitol Hill doesn't find itself so engulfed by citizens' messages that it tunes them out.

In the end, adapting to new communications technology will require work on both sides of the equation. Members of Congress will need to develop the tools that allow them to manage immense volumes of "mail," and let constituents know the best and most effective ways of passing along their thoughts. Voters who want to have an impact will need to pay attention, and not just assume that sending a quick email or filling out a form provided by their favorite advocacy group will command attention.

In the age of instant communications, in other words, it's not just the volume of words but the quality of the communication that matters.

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