In Search of New Leadership
BARSKY, JAMES E.
In Search of New Leadership POWER IN THE HOUSE By Richard Boiling Dutton. 291 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by JAMES E. BARSKY while it may or may not be true that the House of Representatives is out...
...A mechanic never tampers with something that works...
...Yet a compelling argument for not changing the system can also be made...
...Indeed, it is a much better book than one expects from a politician...
...The general historical background on the House, and Boiling's own firsthand accounts of some more recent legislative maneuvers, flesh out his theories...
...The reformers' case is thus blighted by their intense special interest...
...The author's attacks on the Speaker, and his partisan assaults on the Republicans, are flaws in Power in the House...
...Nevertheless, Power in the House is a good book...
...Moreover, they have been inclined to blame their difficulties on the seniority system, by which a man may accumulate enormous power through the good fortune of never having been seriously challenged for re-election...
...His particular target, as it was in an earlier book (House Out of Order), is the present Speaker, John Mc-Cormack...
...For the most part, these men represented rural districts largely out of touch with the desperate needs of an urban nation...
...The author's experience makes him well qualified to criticize the House...
...Great Speakers of the House, such as Henry Clay and Thomas Reed, shifted committee assignments, stacking important committees with men who supported proposals favored by the President, the Speaker himself, or a majority of their party as expressed in the party caucus...
...Reviewed by JAMES E. BARSKY while it may or may not be true that the House of Representatives is out of step with the nation, it certainly hears a different music than the liberal elements in our society...
...One strong-willed man, at the head of a committee, can turn the legislative process into a graveyard of proposals regarded as both decent and necessary by a majority of his colleagues...
...Boiling, concentrating on the seniority system, notes that historically it is a flexible tradition, not a concrete rule...
...His proposals for reform seem realistic and worthy of serious consideration...
...Of the 20 standing committees in the 90th Congress, 11 were chaired by South-era Democrats and three by border-state Democrats...
...For they occasionally make the book seem more like campaign literature than a study of House procedures...
...This is true even when the reader is sympathetic and the charges are necessary to Boiling's purpose...
...Clinton Rossiter has contended that the Electoral College should be retained because while a change might help, it also might not—a point also applicable to Congress...
...Boiling contends that this state of affairs is a result of weak, ineffective leadership in the House...
...Many of the Speaker's powers were stripped away in 1910, when Joe Cannon occupied the office...
...Though we may think the legislative branch is inadequate and out of date, it must be admitted that few parliamentary bodies have been as successful as the U.S...
...Congress...
...In this circumstance, there is a strong argument for upsetting the existing arrangement and placing power in the hands of the able young men who represent the cities and suburbs...
...Calls for reform of the House, therefore, generally emanate from liberals whose best legislative efforts have been delayed or mangled by its machinery, just as calls for the impeachment of Earl Warren have come from conservatives objecting to the Supreme Court's civil rights decisions...
...Boiling wants to restore some of those powers, but the main thrust of his argument is less for Congressional reform than for changes in the Democratic party leadership in Congress...
...Finally, the book is—wonder of wonders—concise, direct, and not at all badly written...
...In Power in the House, Representative Richard Boiling maintains that change is vital because a majority should, sooner or later, be able to work its will—something not always possible now...
...In fact...
...Ultimately, however, he calls not for McCormack's ouster but for the democratization of the Democratic party's leadership process...
...With all its faults, the seniority system is effective...
...There, he believes, seniority has become an ironclad rule, and he cites the failure to punish "non-program" Democrats who persistently oppose the national party's policies...
...Boiling—who has served 20 years in the House as representative of Missouri's fifth district, and 14 years on the Committee on Rules—blames Mc-Cormack for most of the liberal legislative failures of the 1960s...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 24
