WASHINGTON REPORT: Ultimate Test for Reformers
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT ULTIMATE TEST FOR REFORMERS Democratic battalions of Congressional and party reformations have gained ground these last several years. Their accomplishments have not been...
...Opponents of reform tried to dunk the reforms, but with little success...
...Actually, this delegation contest occurred in the context of the burgeoning civil-rights movement rather than in the context of a general political reform movement...
...Their accomplishments have not been inconsiderable...
...Democrats won 44 additional seats in the House of Representatives in the November elections...
...The caucus reflected this changed attitude...
...Voters want an effective Congress and constructive legislation...
...He's capable of picking up where the intractable Mills left off...
...This is mistaking form for substance...
...The Bourbons of the party left Kansas City with a heavy case of the sulks, which should pass away in time for them to return to the 1976 convention to try to nominate their favorite, Senator Jackson of Washington...
...But a majority of its members did make substantial changes in the method of committee assignments and the means by which nominations to committees are ratified...
...The Democratic members of the Committee were stripped of their additional powers to appoint other Democrats to other legislative committees...
...However, it triggered an awareness of the unrepresentative character of other state delegations habitually being sent to the nominating conventions every four years-those in the north, west and east, as well as in the south...
...Not every member under 30 is by definition virtuous and capable in the ways of the House or every member with 30 years service without virtue or capability...
...SISYPHUS...
...Wilbur Mills who was attending a well-covered burlesque show in Boston) and the newly elected Democrats, although not yet sworn-in, met in caucus in Washington...
...The reformers, House and Senate, have yet to produce qualified legislative leadership...
...Some Democratic reformers in the House are talking as if the caucus reforms were a guarantee of achieving tax reform and comprehensive health insurance coverage and housebreaking the petroleum companies...
...The newly elected Democrats and similarly reformist Democrats, already seated in the House, could not have voted the reforms by themselves...
...A woman delegate can have the views of Clare Booth Luce as well as those of a Gloria Steinem...
...in fact, he may simply abandon his command post and resign from the House...
...One does not wish to return to such a situation, but some reformers returned from Kansas City talking as if an open delegate-selection process were a guarantee of a progressive Democratic party...
...Wayne Hays of Ohio on some issues in return for supporting him for party leadership, even that of Speaker of the House at an appropriate time...
...Franklin Roosevelt was repeatedly nominated by highly "unrepresentative" convention delegations...
...For example, despite their welcome gains in caucus-a political apparatus-House reformers have yet to show signs of cohesion at the legislative level...
...However, as was written in an earlier dispatch, change is not necessarily improvement...
...A headline is not to be equated with a triumph of worthy legislation in the committee room...
...The lyricism, the poetry, of change has ended...
...The newer reformers, and many of the incoming members, have great stage presence, but when the TV klieg-lights are extinguished and the attentive reporters put away their notebooks, it will take men and women not superior in histrionics, but strong in the habits of command, in the legitimate ways of knowing when to bargain and how much to bargain for and what's achievable and what is not...
...And, Mr...
...New faces and numerical changes are incapable of achieving these goals...
...That would be an exchange of a Neville Chamberlain for a Stanley Baldwin...
...Party reform may be said to have begun ten years ago when an effort was made to dislodge the KKK-minded Mississippi Democratic delegation at the party's Presidential nominating convention in Atlantic City...
...There are indications that the committee reforms and the strengthening of the Democratic Caucus, until recently an unused instrument of policy-making, may have been achieved as a result of political bargains not yet disclosed...
...Some old-timers, eager for power but not for reform, had to be enlisted...
...At another level, Congressional reformers, many of whom sharply disagree with the party reformers, were also gaining ground last month...
...the prose has begun...
...And without such leadership, their electoral gains of this year may vanish as did similar gains in 1966...
...The newer Beowulf warriors of reform, many of them smart and able, seem not to have realized that the gains they achieved last month were a result of ground plowed years ago in lonely fashion by such as Reps...
...Delegations, each arithmetically faithful to the diverse groupings in its state, bears little relationship to the substance of issues and the nomination of a progressive Presidential nominee who can win...
...A black can have the views of Rep...
...Furthermore, Speaker Albert, with his conspicuous failing as a leader, will remain in office...
...A symbolic victory of sorts was achieved, although President Johnson viewed this uprising, as he did Robert Kennedy's appearance at that convention, as a personal affront...
...Dellums or Booker T. Washington...
...One report is that reform leaders may have enlisted Rep...
...The McGovern-later Fraser-Commission's recommendations did lead to demographically more representative state delegations when they gathered two years ago at the national convention...
...The caucus, of course, is not empowered to legislate...
...The first was designed to open the delegate-selection process in each state and the second, less known but also important, to provide greater equity in convention proceedings...
...Reformers by nature tend to be unruly -like a swarm of bees in search of a hive, as one reporter wrote...
...these do not guarantee leadership...
...It also agreed to enlarge the membership of crucial committees, including the Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax, welfare and health legislation...
...Incumbent Democrats (minus Rep...
...To suggest otherwise publicly, as some reformers are doing, is to court disaster for Democrats in the 1976 elections...
...The 1968 convention's gory goings-on generated the McGovern and O'Hara commissions...
...The party reformers also have a lesson to learn...
...Last month (December), for the first time, a party convention was held at Kansas City midway through the four-year Presidential term-the so-called "mini-convention...
...But their conclusive test has not yet been taken...
...This was not made clear in the reporting of obscurantist "how-manyangels-on-the-head-of-a-pin" debates among the delegates as to the difference between a "quota" and "affirmative action" in respect to assuring that women and minority groups are adequately represented in each state's convention delegation...
...Boiling of Missouri and, later, Udall of Arizona...
...Americans for Democratic Action has indicated that the newly elected would have collectively scored about 60 percent on ADA-selected legislative issues compared to about 25 percent scored by those displaced...
...But the Democratic party's High Churchmen never took kindly to the reformers, among whom are not only loyal Puritans, but also spoil-sports, bully boys and potential Separatists...
...Mills, it was decided, will no longer be chairman of this committee...
...Ullman of Oregon, who is scheduled to be the new Ways and Means chairman, has grown increasingly less amenable to change since he first entered the House...
...SANE reported in its November newsletter that when the new Congress convenes in mid-January, 41 percent of the membership will have declared themselves in favor of substantial reductions in Defense Department spending...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 11
