Tag Archives: House of Representatives

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Clueless at Governing

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No nation looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus.

Congress is the best example of the price we can pay when the rewards of public performance are greater than those of private negotiation. Donald Trump and the so-called “Freedom Caucus” have tried out rhetorical in-your-face antics reminiscent of some of our darkest comics, but without the fun or wit.

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No one looking for a model of governmental efficiency would take any comfort from a good look at the current House leadership debacle. Its twin failures to produce effective public policy and work with the President offer cautionary truths about how to fail to produce effective action. The House of Representatives is a broken institution with public approval ratings to match. No country looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus. Bipartisanship occasionally breaks out and offers momentary hope. But it has become a major achievement to keep the government funded for a whole month. In the process, the Speaker of the House who finally negotiated a compromise promptly lost his job. In this body, the few conciliators in the governing party that remain seem mute and mostly ineffective.  For their part, Democrats appear to be willing to let the chaos continue, hoping it will convert into electoral gains.  As an idea, E pluribus unum no longer has much appeal.

While this branch of the of government was not designed to work with the efficiency of a parliament, congressional dysfunction now leaves so much on the table that leaves Americans less well-off and secure: everything from immigration reform to timely allocations of funds for infrastructure improvements. We know this institution is in deep trouble when many of its members are now willing to risk triggering a government default and imperiling the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency: usually for no more than pressing some dubious ideological point.

What is wrong? What best practices for communicating in organizations are routinely ignored? Briefly, some of the overwhelming problems on Capitol Hill have their origins in two ineffective communication patterns.

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The first is that the body is obviously and hopelessly organized into factions—notably parties, special interest caucuses, and their media—making it likely that members will only work to defend their kind rather than the whole. Since most of the process of legislating is done away from the floors of the House and Senate, it falls to party leaders, whips, and members to work out in private and with their own caucuses what they will accept by way of a legislative agenda. Differences of opinion have fewer chances to be moderated in environments that would encourage conciliation. The founders feared this hyper partisanship for good reason. Indeed, Senate and House Leaders now move so cautiously in their narrow partisan lanes that it can be hard to tell if their images on a screen are stills photos or videos.

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This problem is compounded by a tradition of individual offices set up as separate fiefdoms spread over four buildings on the east side of the Capitol. One wonders how different legislative life would be if the 435 voting members of the House worked in the conditions known to most of white-collar America: in the same ‘cubicle farm’ spread over one or two floors. As it is, support staffs and dispersed offices enable the kind of isolation of members that discourages more discussion across party lines. Revealingly, members note that most no longer share a meal in the U.S. Capitol’s various dining rooms: a small but revealing change from the past.

A second problem is the changing character of those seeking high public office. In the age of social media and 24-hour news there seems to be more interest in the expressive possibilities of serving in public office than doing the work of governing.  The temptation to continually raise campaign funds can easily become all-consuming.

In the lore of Congress there has always been an expectation that the “show horses” would sometimes win out over the “work horses.”  A retired Lyndon Johnson once complained to a CBS producer about the “pretty boys” created by the growth of television. The former Senate Majority leader’s point was that visual media gave rise to a new breed of members more interested in the theater of politics than finding ways to bridge differences.  We are electing figures who have very little interest or skill in active deliberation.

Since it is a solid axiom that we more easily find comity in small groups, trying to forge leadership within large bodies like the 535 member Congress needs to be seen for the problem it frequently is: the organizational equivalent of trying to get even a few dozen college professors to form a single straight line.  We seem to no longer find much joy in political unity.

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Different Systems That Should Yield Different Outcomes

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       McConnell Talking in a Typically Empty Senate

Imagine what would happen to a dithering figure like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell if he was required to show up every week to answer questions from members of the Senate.

The long shutdown of portions of the American government shares some features with the Brexit impasse that has left the U.K. in a catastrophic stalemate.  As this is written, neither system seems capable of building coalitions to execute needed changes.  But one system has the better odds: a better structure for moving forward.

From a political and communications perspective, the standoff in the United States is much more predictable than the impasse in the United Kingdom.  Here’s why.  A communications starting point typically emphasizes direct discussion and negotiation as basic tools for moving a lumbering government off dead center. A parliamentary model has the kind of deliberative infrastructure that requires direct communication. Debate in the House of Commons will not allow members to exist only in their own informational bubbles.  The system requires public and frequent contact between key ministers and their shadow counterparts literally just a few feet away.  Since the key business of the House is debate, members must be prepared to be effective advocates and better listeners.

British parliamentary debate is often riveting, and it is also public. Granted, positions tend to solidify when spoken in public.  Any system emphasizing public discussion can turn intellectual fluidity into hardened cement.  But debate in the commons is still better than our ‘no debate’ Congress, which emphasizes “statements” issued mostly for the record rather than the ears of other members.

All of this leads one to expect that Brexit would be closer to resolution than it is. Alas, the problem in London is really not structural, but one of basic leadership. The nation has weak leaders in the form of Prime Minister Theresa May and the Labor Party’s Jeremy Corbyn.  May is especially risk-averse and inflexible: precisely the opposite of what seems necessary.

 

What a comparison of the two systems makes clear is how American divided government lacks any systemic requirement for a public airing of competing political claims.

 

If it’s possible, the American system right now is even more anemic, having just come off a two-year period with a mostly comatose Congress that had been thoroughly rolled by the President.  As is obvious, the checks and balances that are ostensibly part of the system have been absent. Compliant Senate and House majorities have shown little interest in challenging a rogue executive.

More misery in the country was only avoided when enough Americans voted last November, resulting in split party majorities in the two houses of Congress.  The House of Representatives will now fulfill the oversight function the founders envisioned. But the GOP-dominated Senate and White House are still sufficiently entrenched to make it difficult to build coalitions to solve problems.

What a comparison of the two systems makes clear is how American divided government lacks any systemic requirement for a public airing of competing political claims. Remember that C-SPAN cameras controlled by both bodies of Congress routinely conceal the truth that few are present when the House and Senate are in session.  Elected deciders are usually not in the room to hear the comments of those on the other side. The cameras are never allowed to show empty seats.  Instead, we depend mostly on journalists to summarize and sometimes create proxy debates on some core issues.  And that’s not journalism’s job.

Journalism is not structured to foster direct one-on-one debate.  It is almost never in the interests of news organizations to turn over control of a venue to opposing political figures. To be sure, we have many fine journalists working these days.  But routine journalistic practices require the interruption of direct debate. Journalistic norms range from the need for heavy editing in the interests of time or space to a compulsion to introject new issues for discussion before old ones have been fleshed out.  Television and ‘short-read’ articles make discursive political discussion problematic.

So it seems clear that the Parliamentary system has the edge in resolving a political impasse. If that judgment is not apparent, try to imagine what would happen to a dithering figure like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell if—as in a parliamentary system–he was required to show up every week and answer questions from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.  There’s a big difference between being a party leader in Congress and being an authentic champion of democratic discourse.

Eventually we will hear of a privately negotiated deal to end the shutdown.  That’s our de-facto system, put in place not because of any constitutional requirement, but because we have mostly ignored the collective action of a body of legislators working out their differences in public debate.