WASHINGTON REPORT: 'Tyranny of the Incumbency'
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT 'TYRANNY OF THE INCUMBENCY' The state of the Congress, like the state of the Nation, draws concern and prescriptions these days. But not any or all proposed remedies are helpful....
...What is improper about this...
...These party officials may be asked to read the material and share their responses with the Senator...
...For example, incumbent and opponent should be authorized to send one or two newsletters mailed simultaneously during the general-election campaign...
...But this was meant to be, ever since Congress first convened...
...One hypothetical example would be sending under the "frank" birthday greetings to VIPs in a member's state...
...Proponents of fairer election campaigns-an admirable objective-should remember a hazard in securing equity by exclusive reliance upon statute, a hazard albeit described by a royalist in politics, the poet, T.S...
...In sum, the sleeping federal legislature has roused itself in recent years to better duty...
...As the number of new members in the Congress has risen (approaching two-thirds), the institution itself has responded...
...The Congress is a political institution...
...Supporters of a Senator may be on a computerized mailing list, at their request, so that they can receive each press release and position paper issued by him...
...But such an action can be administratively prohibited...
...Currently, the Congress dwells in the outskirts of the nation's good feelings, although this observation needs a prompt modification...
...Any effort to redress an innate imbalance between office-holder and challenger is better directed toward affording the latter during a campaign the privileges of the former, rather than by hobbling an office-holder during his term after he's won majority support of his constituents in the general election...
...the feisty reformer, referred in one of his books to the "tyranny of the incumbency...
...Not ever decisively, because, critics should keep in mind, the Congress is a federal, not a national legislature, as is the British Parliament...
...Officials, from precinct to state party chairman, of the same political party as a Senator may be listed on a computerized mailing list and sent information about pending legislation that would amend the federal campaign-election statutes...
...Yes, more improvements are needed...
...But, already, nine of these Republicans have announced they are not running for reelection this year...
...However, the overwhelming majority of mailings are valid, although, of course, it reflects a "marriage" of self-interest and public-interest by which constituents are informed of legitimate public matters by their elected members of Congress, who, in turn, hope they are remembered on Election Day by these same constituents...
...There is currently an effort underway to reform constituent-mailing operations of members of Congress and, ultimately, to eliminate the political activities of members' staffs...
...For many years, they have banded together for protection and solace under the name of the "Wednesday Club...
...Instead, an incumbent's opponents should be granted the same mailing privilege during a general campaign...
...Some, indeed, are unhelpful...
...It's the other guys who aren't," is how one House member has chosen to characterize the situation...
...For example, the congressional Republican party includes at most three-dozen consistently liberal-moderate members...
...This has helped, it for no other reason than a bit more congressional business is being done in public...
...This causes as much grief as anything for the Senator, because his supporters at the last election often disagree with him on subsequent major legislative positions he has taken...
...My guy is ok...
...It was an apt description, at the time...
...Overall, Congress has alienated itself from both a consistent understanding of economic and social problems and from their solutions...
...Legislatively, in a move to reclaim authority in fiscal matters, the House of Representatives and the Senate each established for itself a permanent budget committee in an effort to provide a rational apparatus by which to govern the authorization and appropriation of funds...
...More and more, as has been noted in previous columns, the tendency is to compel people to do everything that they're not forbidden from doing...
...SISYPHUS...
...Recently, these pages have described some of what is* wrong...
...It is not a wholly accurate description now--due, in part, to improvements already described...
...But not all of these, such as the ill-health of the two major political parties, can be legislated into being...
...Americans often are heard knocking the Congress, yet somehow finding simultaneous nice things to say about their own elected representatives in the House and the Senate...
...Sometimes, too, friends of congressional reform overdo themselves...
...Electorally, the Congress in 1974 enacted a federal campaign-financing act, major portions of which have "survived a challenge to it by an unlikely set of challengers, Senator Buckley of New York and former Senator Eugene McCarthy...
...Nevertheless, there has been improvement...
...Hastings said he was so frustrated he didn't choose even to finish out the remaining half of his two-year term...
...This is a service, which, also, the member of Congress hopes will be remembered on the next Election Day...
...The ground for self-decision, and with it self-responsibility, is shrinking these days, without as well as within politics...
...And one Republican, Rep...
...As a federal legislature, its 535 members will always act from time to time as if each is running a competitive mom-and-pop grocery store...
...Administratively, the Congress has sought to improve its operations by" passing a major legislative reorganization act five years ago...
...Eliot...
...In the 1960s, U.S...
...It restricts the duration of commitment of armed forces in hostilities or hostility-prone situations, unless there is first a declaration of war approved by the Congress, as used to happen in the good old days when the President was obliged to, and did share his foreign-policy inclinations with the Congress-that is, Presidents abided by the dictates of the Constitution...
...It would be complicated, but a similar rebalance could be established for primary as well as general election campaigns...
...Its members are "winners...
...Late last month, the Supreme Court upheld major sections of the campaign-financing act...
...Perhaps winners shouldn't be permitted to take all, but certainly they, as elected representatives in a political body, should be afforded a reasonably long leash...
...True, there are instances of abuses of the computerized mailing system, maintained by federal employes paid with federal funds...
...Also, to the unhappiness of Secretary of State Kissinger, the Congress sought to reclaim its responsibility in foreign policy...
...Computers enable Senators and House members to send thousands of letters under a "frank"-that is, without cost to the members-each year to constituents who have been classified in a variety of ways: their vocations, their interests, their public likes and dislikes, etc...
...All these are defensible, although outside reformers are beginning to disagree...
...Letters, often accompanied by reprints of a member's speech on the subject, may be sent, as to lawyer-constituents explaining to them the merits and demerits of a pending bill-e.g., S.I, a proposed massive overhaul of the federal criminal justice code...
...One such effort was passage of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, enacted over President Nixon's veto...
...It is difficult, even if desirable, to separate activities in congressional offices that bear on assistance to constituents...
...Boiling (D-Mo...
...There are a number of other ways by which the imbalance between incumbent and challenger can be redressed-not by curtailing activities of incumbents during their terms, but by extending to nominated challengers the advantages that presently only sitting members have...
...He cautioned against those "dreaming of systems so perfect, no one needs to be good...
...Hastings of upstate New York, a four-termer, simply upped and resigned last month...
...There is obviously, however defensible, a strong motive of self-interest by a member of Congress that generates assistance to constituents...
...It is preferable that the advantage of an incumbency be curtailed in an election year not by infringing on a Senator's ability to communicate with constituents during his term, an obligation James Madison and others emphasized at the Constitutional Convention...
Vol. 103 • February 1976 • No. 5
