Will the Senate Sober Up?
Scully, Michael Andrew
"Will the Senate Sober Up?" Michael Andrew Scully Will the Senate Sober Up? The demands of the postwar world have transformed the Senate from an "exclusive club" into something like a convocation of princes from a hundred...
...Indeed, they are not talkathons at all...
...the intransigents buckled and agreed to allow final passage of the bill the next day...
...Last August 5, as the Senate was nearing its summer adjournment, Robert Byrd detailed its accomplishments over the previous seven months...
...In his masterwork, The American Commonwealth, Lord Bryce wrote a century ago what remains a fair description of senators today: [R]eviewing the whole hundred years' history of the Senate, the true explanation of its capacity is to be found in the superior attraction which it has for the ablest and most ambitious men...
...In essence, if the Senate and its leader were going to be judged by whether agreeable legislation was passed, then the Senate's leader was going to make certain that in the mechanics of day-to-day procedure he had the power to lead...
...Practical, untheoretical men, leading active, often frenetic lives, senators allowed the institution in which they serve to slip into disrepair...
...But when cloture was invoked on the central amendment to the gas bill, the The American Spectator February 1978 15 filibuster had only just begun...
...In the most passionate Senate debate of our time, the opponents of the 1964 civil rights bill by and large accepted defeat once a cloture motion to end their filibuster had passed...
...Best publicized of these incidents was the two-week delay of the natural-gas-price bill carried on by Senators Abourezk and Metzenbaum last September...
...The ideological criticism remains, of course, that Byrd is, as one of his disapproving colleagues put it, like a "plumber"—not caring what is in the pipes as long as things keep moving...
...Passing bills, winning approval for legislation which, although not enough for ideologues, could not have been passed without Lyndon Johnson —that is how he perceived his job, and how he won his reputation...
...To the State Senate in 1950, Congress in 1952, to one of the state's two then-vacant U.S...
...With that, earlier conceptions of what good Senate leadership entailed also changed...
...In the end, the Majority Leader's power to hurry the ratification of popular opinion, like so much in "the modern Senate," is a repudiation of belief in the need for any Senate at all...
...The demands of the postwar world have transformed the Senate from an "exclusive club" into something like a convocation of princes from a hundred private fiefdoms...
...Johnson's other tinkering with Senate procedure is the simplest, yet it has had the most profound impact on the conduct of senators...
...Under Senate rules, amendments "at the desk" before cloture is invoked may be brought up for consideration after cloture...
...He eyed and won elective office for the first time in 1946, when he took a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates...
...An intelligent, hard-working, canny man, he views his role as one of expediting Senate business...
...and nobody would now so describe it...
...Like Johnson before him, and somewhat more than Mansfield, Byrd tries to keep floor activity within a 11.111,1R11-11jILL11111.11t)1111L.Li, ' l'I,0111111LIV111 1.7 , 1 I 16 The American Spectator February 1978 strict framework—which prevents all but the rarest Senate debates from becoming exciting or instructive...
...In their perceptive analysis in Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, political columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak note Johnson's subtle but important alterations in Senate habits and procedures...
...Here, then, is Johnson's legacy as Majority Leader: By an extraordinary force of personality and by shrewd manipulation of procedures he gave the ship a throttle...
...But Johnson utilized this old practice in tandem with the Majority Leader's power to schedule floor activity...
...Several times in the past year, and to an ever increasing degree over the past several years, legislation has been stuck on the floor for days and the Senate held hostage by a handful of intransigents...
...Therein lies the dilemma of Majority Leader Robert Byrd...
...At four o'clock in the afternoon, Byrd took the floor and began to call up Metzenbaum's amendments...
...Ultimately, the survival of those protections hinges upon the existence of some reasonable ethic of fair play, which prevents their tyrannical (and sometimes successful) use by zealots...
...Byrd uses this technique, as did Mansfield, but recent innovations such as the new budget process (which requires extensive committee work early each session, followed by a crush of floor activity in April and May) also contribute to a pattern of on-again, off-again floor consideration...
...A loss from which Kennedy's Senate career has never truly recovered, for Robert Byrd it was the big step up...
...to oversee a growing executive branch, which meant hiring thousands of aides to perform numerous legislative functions...
...And as rapid-fire lawmaking hinders the ability of senators to discuss bills in depth, so late-night sessions, another Johnson first, dampen enthusiasm for the fray...
...Therein lies the dilemma of Robert Byrd...
...By a combination of ability and diligence—and by attention to the mundane and tedious tasks of a shopkeeper—Byrd advanced from a leadership job of minor importance to a key role in national affairs...
...His detractors scoff at the notion that Robert Byrd is more than a shallow, though canny, striver...
...On Monday, October 3, after a parley with Vice President Mondale, Byrd requested a "ruling of the chair" from Mondale to the effect that it was within the power of "the chair" to rule out of order any amendment it deemed dilatory on its face...
...If Byrd attempts to remove the potential for abuse, either by setting new precedents or by passing new rules, he extends his own power as Majority Leader—and in so doing continues the process by which the Senate entered upon its present travails...
...Partial agreement was not enough: When influential "liberals" such as Abraham Ribicoff refused to back off their previous commitments to Byrd, the Humphrey candidacy was finished...
...But procedure is also a necessity, for there are times when rules must substitute for comity, when rules and customs are the frail impediments to chaos...
...Born into rural poverty, he was a store clerk and butcher, before opening his own shop after World War II...
...After two weeks as hostage of the intransigents, having used every weapon in his arsenal without success, Byrd reacted with a display of raw power...
...Byrd would be Michael Andrew Scully is assistant managing editor of The Public Interest...
...Within a decade of V-J Day older ways of thought and action were being called outmoded...
...By unanimous consent the call of the quorum would be suspended, and the Senate back in business...
...Almost equally remarkable was his dogged pursuit of education...
...What does seem worrisome has been Byrd's noticeable lack of success at keeping the pipes clear whenever important issues were before the Senate...
...They are Johnson's legacy of power to Robert Byrd, as well as the best illustration of how greatly the Senate has changed...
...It is a company of shrewd and vigorous men who have fought their way to the front b'y the ordinary methods of American politics, and on many of whom the battle has left its stains...
...So now, if all parties agree to time limits—and an effort to get them to agree is made on virtually every bill and amendment —the'Majority Leader proposes a unanimous consent agreement which binds the Senate...
...But delaying quorum calls, on-and-off, all day long, depending originally upon the needs of the Majority Leader (today upon the convenience of whoever is on the floor), robbed the average senator of his certainty of when floor activity would resume...
...to meet constituents and interest-group representatives, which meant less and less time for the Senate floor or for informal discussions with colleagues...
...In fact, it was Byrd's attention to the practical duties of a Whip which served as the point of attack in the attempt by "liberal" senators to prevent his accession to the top post upon Mansfield's retirement...
...The alternative was Hubert Humphrey, whose health was beginning to decline but whose ideological attachment was unquestionable...
...By now they have become habits in their own right...
...unable to lead the Senate properly, they argued, because he was a handyman, not an "issue-man...
...A procedural method of avoiding strict and time-consuming adherence to Senate rules, they say in effect, "if no one objects, let's do it this way...
...As late as the 1940s it was normal for as many as 50 senators to be seated on the Senate floor each day...
...Criticized in the early weeks of the Senate debate on energy for not pushing harder for the Carter program, Byrd responded, "I always feel it best for the Majority Leader to stay in the background, unless it is necessary for him to move forward...
...What are not allowed are "dilatory" motions and tactics—that is, purposely delaying the bill's passage...
...The Senate has changed, as has the role of government in general and people's perceptions of it...
...He tells freshmen senators what has been told freshmen for decades: that they have two types of colleagues, "work horses and show horses...
...He lacked, as it were, the moral authority which comes to one who has exhibited a consistent attachment to liberal-progressive ideals...
...That didn't stop Abourezk and Metzenbaum...
...Depending on your view, that may not be such a bad thing...
...It encourages disharmony and frustration among the serious, while affording the quirky the excuse that they have been "steamrollered" and put-upon...
...It does mean there need exist a sense of membership strong enough to suppress the extravagances of ideology and the temptations of the nightly news —a sense the Senate now lacks...
...So Robert Byrd assumed the office of Majority Leader...
...It would be easy to sentimentalize the loss, but more realistic to admit that, after all, the Websters, Clays, and Calhouns were always the exception...
...First of these is the frequent use of unanimous consent agreements...
...The sensible institution keeps them safe, a legacy from those who have travelled strange roads...
...In the best of times, it is a map of a road driven a hundred times before...
...It was, after all, what was being asked of them: to legislate, which meant to pass bills, not deliberate...
...Majority Whip is a prestige job, but it is also something of a nuisance job—knowing which senators are in town, and when, holding off votes until this one's plane lands or that one returns from the White House...
...to an extent only recently perceptible, he also shattered the hull...
...So what begins as an attempt to understand Robert Byrd, to assess hisskills and techniques in office, becomes in the end an appraisal of the modern Senate's predicament...
...By failing to judge which among its functions remained possible, and which, by the nature of the Senate's unique role in the national government, were most worthy of being maintained, the Senate has become a victim of the modern, massive government it helped to create...
...Spurred by a vision ofactivist reform, goaded by a public taught to minimize the difficulties of representative government, the Senate and its Members learned to run a treadmill for favor...
...Yet, to make the Senate "perform," as it had at no time since the pre-Court-packing days of the New Deal, Johnson had to change the way it operated...
...This quagmire is not of Byrd's making...
...Johnson would "suggest the absence of a quorum," summon opposing sides to the cloakroom, win some agreement or compromise, and then return to the floor...
...That means that in large part they are attacks on the power of the Majority Leader...
...The American Spectator February 1978 17...
...In 1977, more than 20 percent of all Senate sessions ended after 8 p.m...
...Over time, what had been a Senate of individuals has become a hundred individual senators...
...By the time Lyndon Johnson became Majority Leader in January of 1955, judgments about the Senate's value as an institution were being merged, in the minds of many opinion-makers, with the question of whether the Senate was passing legislation that fit their notions, often worthy notions, of the kind of place America should be...
...That does not mean an agreement on particular issues...
...As might be expected of a night-school veteran, Byrd uses such sessions frequently...
...For the Senate is the great "hedge on our bets," born of the realization that our opinions, like those of every public in history, can be wrong...
...Robert Byrd has known battle...
...Thus the average senator no longer has much inclination to ask serious questions, or indeed to be very interested in such bills at all...
...It has never been in doubt which kind Byrd is, or considers himself to be...
...Yet the Humphrey effort never quite got off the ground, in spite of Senator Kennedy's success at persuading other contenders to withdraw and some agreement within the "liberal" bloc to back Humphrey...
...He knows the insand-outs of Senate procedure as well as anyone, and much better than most...
...But] a sort of Olympic dwelling place of statesmen and sages...it never was...
...Few men can be lured to statesmanship when the reward is certain martyrdom...
...In any case, senators knew when to return...
...Today his office, not the Senate floor or anterooms, is the center of a senator's world...
...That is no longer, or at least is much less, the case today...
...When Senate Democrats organized for the new session in January of 1967, Ted Kennedy's then-rising star was boosted by election to the Senate's number-two leadership post, Majority Whip...
...Following the methods of Senator James Allen of Alabama, who over the past few years has perfected the procedural stall—and who, although an opponent of price controls, advised the duo throughoutAbourezk and Metzenbaum had 508 amendments filed at the desk by the time cloture passed...
...Senate seats in 1958—it was an awesome climb from shopkeeper...
...One abuse of the Senate's procedures had instigated another more stunning and dangerous...
...We cannot expect such restraint unless there is first restored a public appreciation of the benefits of a healthy Senate: fewer slapdash laws which must be "patched up" year after year, a more thoughtful perspective on the long-range effects of government policies, a place where the ideas and aspirations of the nation can seriously be discussed...
...He looks ridiculous, and the Senate incompetent, as time and again intransigents thrust at the underbelly of a body less and less protected by an ethic of accepted behavior, a body so atomized that a handful or fewer dare to thwart 90 colleagues or more...
...He asked that a 36-page review of the Senate's activities be printed in the Congressional Record...
...Yet the very existence of such an ethic presupposes a body infused with enough sense of common purpose to sustain those standards...
...One after another, Byrd called them up and Mondale slapped them down...
...Byrd appeared by cast of mind and temperament the perfect Whip...
...Several hours passed...
...Johnson's response was to list repeatedly the bills the Senate had passed up to that point in the session...
...These agreements are the heart of Byrd's day-to-day technique...
...In so doing, Byrd followed the well-marked path of Lyndon Johnson, the man most associated with "the modern Senate," and a man frequently attacked while Senate leader for not having passed more "liberal" legislation...
...Today, ten is unusual...
...That is a humble posture, as much betrayed by those who claim certain knowledge of the public good as by those who proclaim unswerving attachment to public desires...
...Procedure is a bore...
...It was the center of their world, a place in which they could hope to influence their less gifted colleagues...
...Until a greater public understanding returns, the Senate will remain in its present predicament...
...But because they also suspend debate, they provided Johnson with a way to mediate disagreements "on the spot...
...Prior to Johnson, if some difficulty arose the Senate would "recess to an appointed hour"—perhaps 20 minutes, perhaps two hours...
...For in this as in other visible ways, the Senate exhibits evermore distressing signs of suffering the thralls of institutional crisis...
...Byrd was elected to the comparatively insignificant number-three spot, Secretary of the Democratic Conference...
...He defends Senate prerogative's against executive pressure, often asking that the Senate be allowed to "work its will...
...Mondale agreed, and when the ruling was appealed by the intransigents, a majority of senators—tired and frustrated after two weeks of non-debate—also agreed...
...That whole is the pres-ervation of a functioning institution for those who will come after...
...He seemed well-suited to the daily chores of the Senate floor, and by exercising those responsibilities he freed the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, for other more interesting, and presumably more important, affairs...
...Staying on the floor soon became a waste of his time—there was plenty to do back at the office...
...It is attaching to a Majority Leader powers to overwhelm colleagues who disagree—and our habit of judging Senate leadership by whether those powers succeed in passing agreeable bills—which bears much of the blame for eroding standards of behavior, and which has unleashed the possibilities of free-for-all and reaction...
...But he will also fight for his own prerogatives as Majority Leader...
...Expediting legislation, mediating successfully, passing bills—all these should be seen as a play within a play: important, perhaps even inciting, but always part of a larger whole...
...Since each amendment was itself debatable, the invoking of cloture became a meaningless exercise...
...A sense of membership, and thus legislative efficacy, depends on the recognition of a shared responsibility in that enterprise...
...It has been developing for years, in large part from pressures on the Senate which have transformed it from an "exclusive club" into something like a convocation of princes from a hundred private fiefdoms...
...Unfortunately, meeting the demands, foreign and domestic, of the postwar world was a road no one had travelled...
...To understand the significance of these stalls, consider how they differ from the "talkathons" of old...
...They are shrewd attacks upon the weakest links in the chain of present-day Senate procedure...
...What can be said of the Senate these men knew, however, or indeed of that known by Vandenberg and Wagner and Norris and Taft, is that it had room for exceptional men...
...If he contents himself with the function of expediting Senate business, he remains prey to ideological diehards like Abourezk and Metzenbaum and to erratic gadflies like James Allen...
...This is just one instance of how the numerous Senate rules and traditions that protect minorities of Members and individual prerogatives are breaking down...
...He is capable of being a "tough cookie," more willing to reward and punish than was Mansfield, although he seems not as harsh with those who cross him as was Lyndon Johnson...
...Within 20 minutes, the ByrdMondale combo had disposed of some 30 amendments...
...The aim is to save time, but the effect is to rigidly structure debate...
...By alternating between periods of relative calm and frenetic floor activity (in which numerous unrelated bills were considered), Johnson gave senators little time to bone up on legislation from committees other than their own...
...To screams of protest from others on the floor, Mondale cast a deaf ear, refusing to recognize anyone but Byrd—and thereby preventing any of his rulings from being appealed to the whole Senate...
...Much as some may regret its passing, the Senate of old vanished with limited government...
...Traditionally, quorum calls were used for just that—to determine if a quorum was present...
...It was the burden of these trivial affairs, these daily nuisance-chores for colleagues, which Byrd offered to lift from Whip Kennedy's shoulders, an offer which Kennedy, mourning his last brother, accepted...
...Even if they are dead wrong, to expect him to refrain from using fully the weapons of his office—thus jeopardizing his public reputation—on the chance that it will result in some future good to the Senate seems a bit quixotic...
...Byrd won his law degree in 1963, at the age of 45, after more than two decades of night college and night law classes...
...And it was appreciation for these daily protections that provided the 31-24 margin by which Byrd, in a stunning victory in January 1972, stripped the Whip mantle from a post-Chappaquiddick Kennedy...
Vol. 11 • February 1978 • No. 4
