Notebook: Mr. Clapp's Wonderful Book
Bazelon, David T.
The House of Representatives represents the worst of us —and that not even fairly. It has been so weirdly malapportioned and fancily financed that we actually end up looking a great deal worse...
...The slyly matteroffact tone—with only very rare tidbits of noticeable irony—does not hurt, although it is hardly a wondrous help in working one's way through the volume...
...is leaping to the front of intellectual concern...
...The big miracle is that somehow all of this works...
...and 2) don't just write your congressman— send him money, so that he can buy his way out...
...The casting (something under twenty each for both parties) did not include the bosses, which again shrewdly carried forward the opportunities for candor...
...The situation is that three hundred years or more of immigration, other geographical passion, and gorgeously hard and unjust work, has resulted in this somewhat unspeakable democratic institution...
...Because poli-sci never got close enough to the cash register, where all piety begins...
...Which leads to a Democrat saying "all this talk about caucus is just a dream anyway...
...all he had was the opportunity presented by a shaken-up and therefore politically confused situation, on which he imposed a temporary order by virtue of intellectual power and main force of will...
...This effort cannot be accomplished quietly on the inside...
...A Congressman is the shortest distance between two years...
...This used to be understood as "democracy": the understanding should be revived...
...I don't think votes mean a thing" —referring not to ours, of course, but his...
...We have had no really innovative domestic policy executed by the Federal government in a quarter of a century...
...Until recently, of course...
...and now, hopefully, it may be too late to put the poli-sci departments through the same spiritual meat-grinder...
...Very simply, most congressmen, being in business for themselves, put together personally based coalitions in their districts, where the party often enough does not exist except in a formal sense...
...The assassination of President Kennedy has accelerated this process...
...The book is, literally, all quotes...
...I am guessing that academic work in political science is on a more acceptable level than that in standard college-teacher economics...
...Clapp ever managed to collect such offerings of candor...
...Clapp's connective and summary tissue is both solid and valuable...
...They are an opportunity to chat with colleagues, and this added bonus: "Many bills which are essentially the same come up year after year...
...The Democrats are so deeply split in philosophy that they cannot encourage anything which might divide them even more...
...The corrupt bargain with the Southerners is fully renego tiated—from the Northern view, the price fixed long ago is way out of line...
...The weird power structure of the House derives from the absence of coherent party control, especially on the part of the Democrats...
...Not only the New Deal but all positive domestic effort on the national level ended in 1938...
...What he did, under the strained auspices of The Brookings Institution, was carefully to select and set up two panels of Congressmen, Republicans over here, Democrats over there, and to record the ensuing talk which ranged over all aspects of congressional life and business...
...The Republicans don't need more of a party than they now have: what would they do with it...
...all for it...
...After reading this wonderful book, I have two practical suggestions: 1) support all possible counterpart-fund junkets wholeheartedly—these guys desperately need a chance to get away...
...This approach, in cidentally, goes all the way back to Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government published in 1885: his deep penetration of the theoretical problem undoubtedly contributed in a decisive way to his magnificent performance in actually putting together an ad hoc parliamentary system during the first two years of his administration...
...If Mr...
...They therefore do not answer to party discipline when they arrive in Washington: they do not owe their election to a national party...
...And he did not have the kind of crisis working for him that FDR did...
...Certainly most people who read excessively have noticed that the subject What-is-Congress-and-what-can-wedoabout-it...
...But that is not the situation...
...And not a moment too soon...
...The cure is equally obvious: creation and re-institution of the party caucus in the House, not as a substitute for the seniority system but as an effective overlay—Otto Passman and Judge Smith are told what and when, or out...
...And also because, compared to money and business, the subject itself—that is, the government of the United States of America—was never important enough to attract the meddlesome interest of the trustees...
...One would turn the problem over to a current Mencken, and to hell with it...
...Granted the good faith of the Executive, it ended in Congress...
...A late-fifties phrase of conseqence: "that decision was reached at the Texas level...
...The two biggest men in the congressional scheme of things included here were the two most important subleaders— top aspirants (at the time) for the speakership within the next decade, Richard Bolling and Gerald Ford...
...The quickest way to lay a stethoscope on the heart of the House is to imagine a true parliamentary system, and then compare...
...Clapp's book* is a fair sample, I'm * The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It, by Charles L. Clapp...
...but the basic work was done in 1959 with members of the 86th Congress— the famous Class of '58, plus postgraduate members...
...It is necessary to go back to the districts and begin at the beginning...
...I am not at all clear whether Something Can Be Done About It, but I am certain that many more people are going to have to understand what is going on up there On-the-Hill: that activity was designed to be, on the most profound cultural level, the democratic essence of the whole American idea...
...All of which brings political science to the front of the lecture hall...
...House attendance helps you acquire the background of basic legislation...
...The book was several years in preparation, with follow-up interviews and a manuscript conference as late as 1963...
...Clapp's choice offering: • "Time after time we go on the floor, not knowing anything about the subjects to be discussed...
...Now who would bother getting all wrought up about a rotten borough here or there, and a few comforting rituals designed to ease the late years of aging public servants, or even a number of unpleasantly imaginative techniques for balancing family budgets...
...122-3...
...The irresponsible trading mess which has resulted is the logical result of the nonexistence of the Democratic party at the root-level...
...The miracle has shrunk...
...The advantages of attending debates on the floor anyway are indicated at pp...
...One wonders how Mr...
...Because it will be noticed, upon reflection, that since the New Deal ended in 1938 there has been no significant domestic reform and no purposeful increase in Federal fiscal effect (which would itself be a reform and which all other reforms require) that was not occasioned or excused by a foreign policy or military need—or, thinking of the current Tax Triumph, not just plain wrong...
...This absence begins in the districts...
...It is a marvelous piece of work, a perfect triumph of suggestive fact-gathering and arranging...
...A Republican—"the committee selection system is pure and simple government by crony...
...but these are identified at the beginning of the book...
...I suggest he was our last good fantasy...
...The Rayburn-Martin Rule: "Vote your district first...
...Read with sensitivity, The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It is, all unknowingly or not, a hair-raising scream of pain from them to us...
...The Brookings Institution, 452 pp., $6.00...
...This book is not to be read as a narrative argument, but to be daydreamed and speculated over...
...So people are starting to be concerned about Congress, and are spending less time in dreaming about a perfect genius of a President who can save them from their own history...
...Lest this remark frighten off any potential readers, I hasten to add that Mr...
...He even wrapped up the project with a luncheon for the wives, to make sure nothing had been overlooked...
...It is strangely similar to the Statistical Abstract (for purposes of social analysis, my favorite volume after Notes from Underground and Studies in Classic American Literature), with the difference that suggestive personal quotations are substituted for suggestive public numbers...
...The wonderfully suggestive quotations with which the volume is filled are not ascribed to named participants...
...And highly recommended for this purpose.* Here are a few tasties from Mr...
...On non-political politics: "You can slip up on the blind side of people during an off-year and get in much more effective campaigning than you can when you are in the actual campaign...
...It has been so weirdly malapportioned and fancily financed that we actually end up looking a great deal worse than one was entitled to expect, given a fair roll of the dice...
Vol. 11 • September 1964 • No. 4
