Assure a man that he can keep his situation as an orthodox, and what do you get? You get Congress, in which a political culture still alloyed by the New Deal and Great Society dictates how one can affect reform. Tenure is limited only by the ability to be re-elected, and that introduces Congressional standing as a sort of barony where stability encourages survival. In the Senate, there is an homage to deliberation — a balance of power — at the expense of White House intiative and prerogative. In the House, where they spend, there is the expectation of provincial largesse.
So we hear of dissatisfaction on the right. John Fund wrote about GOP fortunes in the Wall Street Journal; they are clouded, says Fund, mostly because of high expenditures and new entitlements. President Bush, responsible in his own part for this legislation, was offered the same cautionary in 2003 and 2004, insofar as the right would not re-elect what they saw to be a fiscal and federal libertine. That prediction was wrong — all because of the war on terror? No; overspending is rarely a lethal offense in Washington. Leftists risk blaspheming their own religion by criticizing the size and reach of the state, which best explains the absence of pejoratives like "miserly," "draconian," and "mean-spirited" in the 2004 presidential campaign. If a notable percentage of Americans is not revolted by a government takeover of Hippocrates, well, you have not exactly got a hot-button issue in the federal budget deficit.
Naturally, the right wants to see reformers in the majority they elected. Unfortunately, there are pundits and there are politicians; keeping true to form, neither one could succeed in the occupation of the other. Most Hill speeches are tepid, guarded and open-ended. Seek a statesman who is unequivocal and candid on the conception and practice of every policy matter and you will find an elected official who shall serve one term, or many terms from an unassailable district. Many blame a certain House Speaker for his own vilification because he tried to separate politics from statecraft. Reformist Republicans will, therefore, spend according to mores while reforming where feasible and favorable.
Now it is being whispered, even considered seriously in some quarters on the right, that the 2006 midterm election will follow that of 1994, Congressional GOP possessed with the same extravagance and rodomontade as the Democratic Party from whom Republicans took fifty-four seats eleven years ago. This is like postulating that James Brown and Jim Brown — on account of sharing effortlessly graceful motion, irrepressible vitality, and starburst entertainment careers followed by domestic instability and public incivility — could be seamlessly interchanged after a simple trade of hairstyle and chosen first name.
The last Democratic House majority might be confused with this Republican one for a few reasons, all consequent to the charitable monophony it received from a predominantly leftist mainstream intellectual and news media during its 1954-1994 reign. Dissent among Congressional Democrats was marginalized when it did not simply go unreported. Party debate was recognized as the percussion for a bracing rhythm, not mischaracterized as untoward factionalism. Press elites rush up with stretchers on so much as a cough from today's Republican majority. Policy disagreements are fractures, mutiny, ruin; always. Newt Gingrich won himself, in just over four years, more unflattering Time magazine covers than Moammar Ghadafi. But a sound premise extenuation does not make.
Forty years of power serves as a thick underscoring for the phrase, "Time for a change." To be equitable, we can focus on the last thirteen years of Democratic rule and the unwise use of public trust diligently enumerated by Mort Kondracke's Capitol chronicler Roll Call. There was Abscam, the 1980 sting operation that caught four congressmen, including two Democratic House committee chairmen, as they took bribes from FBI agents costumed as sultans of sop. The 1983 House Page Scandal was bipartisan and extra-Congressional but said nothing good of the establishment.
The early Nineties, in turn, said everything bad and worse. The House Banking Scandal, or Rubbergate, brought four convictions of Democratic representatives, led to the proprietary banking system's termination and sent dozens of congressmen into retirement. That was followed closely by the House Post Office Scandal. Polls showed public confidence in Congress on the level of "Throw the bums out." After a net gain in the 1990 midterm elections, Democrats lost nine seats in 1992. Newly inaugurated President Clinton brought the party twin flops — social-science tinkering in the military and the First Lady's socialized medicine dreamchild.
What has the Republican majority to show for impropriety? Scattered lapses of judgment on travel and outside income, troubles shared with minority congressmen. The rolling indictments of Majority Leader Tom DeLay from Texas DA Ronnie Earle stand as the most serious accusations against a Republican leader, and they are to the naked eye a legal parody. Last week Earle indicted DeLay for conspiracy to violate state campaign laws: A crime that for DeLay isn't, at a time when, if it were, it wasn't. A second round came this week when Earle adjusted his indictment to include money laundering — evidence TBA. The third, fourth and fifth counts of the Inquisition might, respectively, charge DeLay with double-parking, copying a Johnny Mathis album from the local library and using a toothbrush long after the blue replacement indicator has faded; at which point Cardinal Earle will stutter, summon his men to leave and try something different when they "Come in again."
What have Democrats to show for originality? For vision? The Republicans' 1994 "Contract with America" campaign was an astounding rejoinder to the voter cynicism that Congressional tradition warranted. Politics were made national, and specific; the electorate was invited to look elsewhere in 1996 if a GOP majority failed to bring ten reform bills to a floor vote.
Is it fair to say that Republicans are listless and complacent? Less so than to understand 1994 as a fine example of an exception. Republicans have not mutated into the German Workers Party — nor has any Democrat a dogeared The Wealth of Nations snug in his attaché. OK, rightists can cut off their noses by staying home or electing a Democrat next year but they must prepare to consign a larger portion of their paycheck to Washington and watch a Congress go soft on Iran, Syria, China and al Qaeda franchises while they wait for an authentic small-government revival. Republican voters are welcome to hold representatives culpable in primaries rather than conceding to a Democrat. Is that not how it should be done? Failing that, people must accept that the prescribed nature of the business of the United States legislature involves a great deal of muddling along; they can push to amend the Constitution to better reflect a government of citizens. One or the other.