Bad officials are elected by good citizens, who do not vote.
—George Jean Nathan, American drama critic
JUST THINKING ABOUT ALL THIS PROBABLY MAKES YOU WANT TO rewrite Willie Nelson’s classic so that it reads “Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be politicians.” Do not despair; turn on your iPod and listen to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Why are you reading this book? Probably you are weary of the nonstop screaming and yelling by self-important and arrogant politicians, the character assassinations, the blabber that pretends to be political debate, the greed and corruption, the pork-barrel projects that use your tax dollars to help some politician on the other side of the country get reelected. Bottom line…you are ticked off at politics.
You are not alone. Surveys, focus groups, academic studies, and circumstantial evidence indicate that the vast majority of eligible voters (eligible is key) are against the politics of polarization. The numbers are rapidly growing.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: The vast majority of eligible voters oppose the politics of polarization. Far from being alone, those who are frustrated by the rot of American politics are in the majority. It is a large majority. That is the single biggest reason polarization cannot continue, at least at current levels.
“Every place I go I hear people saying the same thing about politics. They hate it. They are fed up. I mean everybody.”
—Bill N., focus group, Kansas City, Kansas, Summer 2006
“All the shouting at each other, that’s what I mean. Can’t they shut up in Washington and do the work? We pay them to work, not yell.”
—Pam W., focus group, Memphis, Tennessee, Spring 2006
“The country may be big, and there are a lot of us, but we have to break through a little. Because we’re so polarized right now, we’re paralyzed.”
—Rachel Grady, documentary filmmaker, Washington Post,
September 29, 2006
Bill and Pam are two of the hundreds of voters interviewed for this book. Their feelings, like Rachel Grady’s, represent 80 percent of the people we contacted. These voters are not naive. They know American politics is—and always has been—a contact sport. They recognize that certain political seasons have been nastier than others and they accept this.
These voters believe that politics, at least the way they remember politics, has changed for the worse. It may be that their memories of politics (and face it, how many people do you know who have memories of politics?) are idealized. Maybe theirs are like memories of the summers of our youth, when days were long and, for most of us, carefree. Then, as we got older, the summer days seemed to get shorter and real life took the “free” out of carefree.
Growing older has not changed our perceptions of the way our summers were, and nothing is going to change the public’s perception (and in politics, public perception is really all that matters) that politics used to be different and has now gone bad. It’s not that they don’t care about the political system, they do. The problem is people don’t know what to do to change politics. One of the questions we get most often on the lecture circuit is “How do I change things? Members of Congress only send me form letters when I write them and nothing changes.”
“Sure it pisses me off, but what the hell I gonna do? The politicians are in the big boys’ pockets…they don’t listen to the little guys.”
—Danny F., focus group, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, Summer 2006
“I’d vote for anyone who had the guts to oppose the shit in Washington. But anyone who tries it gets crushed. Look at what those bastards did to McCain right here in SC. They’re pros…dirty, disgusting people…but pros. How you beat that?”
—William B., Charleston, South Carolina,
interview with Beckel,August 3, 2006
For Danny, Pam, Phil, William, and the millions of other Americans like them, the political process must look like the great and powerful Oz did to Dorothy—distant, frightening, and very complex. Washington wants us to think that it, like the wizard’s Emerald City, is a place where important decisions are made in a system that is complex and difficult for the nonpolitician to understand. By so convincing us, Washington maintains a certain amount of power over our lives, and incumbents mostly enjoy eternal political life. Voters come to feel they are powerless, as Dorothy did, in the face of the Wizard.
COMMON GROUND POINT TO REMEMBER: Like the Wizard in that classic movie, Washington’s political game is mostly smoke, mirrors, and lots of noise.
The first step is to begin exposing the myths of polarization. The place to start is Congress.
“Congress is rigged to promote partisanship and extremism. Most congressional districts are drawn to favor one party or the other, and contests take place only in primaries, where low turnouts favor candidates who appeal to the motivated extremes. The flow of special-interest money into congressional races adds to this tilt, and now bloggers are pummeling anyone who deviates from their definition of ideological purity.”
—David S. Broder, Washington Post, September 24, 2006
The Hitler Diaries
The following comments are taken directly from public records. This is what masquerades as debate in Washington’s polarized climate:
“Gingrich and the other backers of the ‘Contract With America’ are ‘worse than Hitler,’ and his Republican counterpart on the House Ways and Means Committee is a ‘Nazi.’”
—Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY),
Newsday, February 19, 1995
“We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality…and that is what the [Republican] nuclear option seeks to do.”
—Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), in a speech delivered
on the Senate floor, March 1, 2005
“Senator Byrd’s inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable. These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon.”
—Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Pittsburgh Tribune-
Review, March 3, 2005
“How dare you break this rule? It is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying: I’m in Paris, how dare you invade me, how dare you bomb my city? It’s mine. This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding, an agreement, and it has been abused.”
—Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), in a speech delivered
on the Senate floor, May 19, 2006
Hitler has been a popular metaphor when Democrats and Republicans are trying to describe each other. So have Joe Stalin, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Mao, Joe McCarthy, O. J. Simpson, and Timothy McVeigh. Along with this rogues’ gallery there has also been the resourceful use of sexual innuendo, just to keep things lively.
Few missed Vice President Cheney’s comments on the Senate floor in June 2004. After being approached by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who was attempting to shake the vice president’s hand, Cheney told Leahy to perform a sexual act on himself, as in “go f–k yourself.” When Neil Cavuto of Fox News gave him the opportunity to express regret over the remark, Cheney said he had none.
During a public hearing by the House Ways and Means Committee, Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-CA) yelled at Scott McInnis (R-CO) “You little wimp…You little fruitcake. You little fruitcake. I said you were a fruitcake.”
Our high school civics textbooks were never this colorful. Of course, there are the crusty old political veterans who mumble that this kind of tough talk is “nothing new around Washington.” They are right. There has been a long history of tough political rhetoric in American politics, but in the age of the 24/7 news cycle, portable recording devices, and YouTube, much of today’s tough talk is literally broadcast around the world.
One of our favorite examples of a more classical put-down came from former president John Quincy Adams. When Adams learned that President Andrew Jackson was to receive an honorary degree from Harvard, he refused to attend the awards ceremony. Adams, an overseer for the college, declared, “I would not be present to see my darling Harvard disgrace herself by conferring a doctor’s degree upon a barbarian and savage who could scarcely spell his own name.”
That was tough talk, but not available on C-SPAN or twenty-four-hour cable news, where such titillating stories are repeated ad nauseam. By the time the news channels tired of the Cheney/Leahy exchange, there must have been several ten-year-olds who happened to catch the story flipping between ESPN and the Disney Channel. Of course, that left parents to explain that “the vice president was only kidding, sweetheart.”
In the past, when extreme partisanship surfaced, consensus and bipartisanship would ultimately prevail. Partially this was for reasons of manners and civility, but it was also essential to avoid a complete paralysis of the legislative process. Today, manners and civility, and a functioning government, are often casualties of political warfare. Moreover, there are few moderate voices in Congress to act as an effective political counterforce.
We should be clear about the definition of a moderate in the U.S. Congress. Moderates are not necessarily people without convictions, though some such species exist. Moderates may hold strong convictions, but they are often willing to compromise with someone who disagrees in order to advance a policy that benefits the most people. Today, polarizers would rather have no legislation at all than have a bill that does not reflect 100 percent of their views or protect 100 percent of their financial interests.
Being a moderate voice in Washington these days almost guarantees immediate retaliation by one’s own party. Money sources and interests, which thrive in the climate of polarization, cut you off and cut you down. A moderate is viewed as an anachronism, a dinosaur from the old era of politics when being reasonable was applauded. It takes courage to reach across the aisle and seek common ground. It is like lifting the keys to an organized-crime family’s garbage truck. Both could abruptly end a career.
Republican polarizers call the moderates among them RINOS (Republican In Name Only). Democrats have no cute name for their moderates. Democratic polarizers refer to their moderates as, simply, dinosaurs.
Thirty years ago, it was commonplace to see as many as 25 percent of the members of one party cross over to vote with members of the other party. Since the late 1980s, however, partisan party-line voting, particularly in the House, has become commonplace. Bipartisan agreement is generally reserved for such critical legislation as the annual Strawberry Awareness Month proclamation.
On serious legislation (and we are being serious), more and more votes are cast along partisan lines. For example, President Clinton’s 1993 economic package, which included an income tax increase for the top 5 percent of wage earners, did not get a single Republican vote in the House. In 2003, President Bush’s prescription drug benefit plan for Medicare participants passed the House with all Republicans voting “aye”—and only nine Democrats supporting the plan.
Another reason for partisan voting is party-enforced discipline. Party leaders in Congress represent the ideological extremes of their parties. Congressional leaders decide which member sits on which committees, a huge weapon in persuading members to vote the party line. Members want to be on the committees that have the greatest impact on their constituents. It helps, for example, that a member of Congress representing a rural district in, say, Iowa, gets on the Agriculture Committee. Failure to follow the party line could find that same member sitting on the District of Columbia Committee. If he or she has only been a little naughty, the member might be consigned to the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. They have trout streams in Iowa, don’t they?
We don’t want to close out this chapter leaving the reader with the idea that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything….
When it comes to appropriating your tax dollars for designated projects back home (aka “earmarks,” “pork,” “pork barrel,” etc.), there is absolute harmony in the halls of Congress. When appropriations bills containing earmarks come to floor of the House and Senate, you would think you were in a monastery full of devoted and loving brothers, not in the polarized Congress we have come to know. Only a few lonely voices protest the squandering of the taxpayers’ money. Their attempts to remove earmarks from legislation have been easily defeated.
During each fiscal year, which for the federal government runs from October 1 to September 30, Congress is supposed to pass the eleven standard appropriations bills to fund the government. The last time that was accomplished, as of this writing, was in 1994. In 2006 Congress passed just two appropriations bills and had to pass a series of temporary spending bills every few weeks to keep the government running. One appropriations bill that usually makes the deadline is the Defense Department appropriation. One would like to think the motivation is national security alone, but, sadly, that is not so.
The defense appropriation comes from the defense subcommittee of the full appropriations committee. The subcommittee has jurisdiction over the largest pool of discretionary spending of any appropriations subcommittee. Most earmarks originate here. You may remember the name of one former chairman of the House defense subcommittee: Randy “Duke” Cunningham, currently serving serious time in a federal penitentiary for giving earmarks to the clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for millions in cash and luxury items.
In the Senate, the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee was Ted Stevens (R-AK), and the ranking Democrat was Daniel Inouye (D-HI). When the Democrats took control of the Senate, the two men exchanged seats, but not their love for earmarks. Not surprisingly, in 2006 the home states of both men received the largest earmarks per capita of any other states; Alaska received $1.05 billion, or $1,677 per resident, while Hawaii got $904 million, or $746 per resident according to the New York Times. The Alaska earmarks included $200 million for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” to tiny Gravina, Alaska, population fifty.
Stevens’s bridge, coupled with the Cunningham/Abramoff scandal, brought much unwanted publicity to the bipartisan earmark pork festival. Government watchdog groups and a few members of Congress had been trying to get the press to pay attention to the pork fest while the number of projects and the billions of dollars raided from the Treasury to pay for them increased under Republican leadership. The bipartisan Congressional Research Service reported that over the past twelve years, the number of earmarks had tripled to more than sixteen thousand with a price tag of $64 billion per year.
One group in Washington has been paying a great deal of attention to earmarks: for lobbyists, pork has become a very big business. Getting earmarks requires lobbyists with contacts on the appropriation committees. If a firm had no appropriations connections, the lobbyists hired relatives of committee members. USA Today reported on October 17, 2006, that lobby groups employed thirty relatives of appropriation committee members, which generated more than $750 million for projects in 2005 alone.
A USA Today poll, released the day after their story appeared, found that 80 percent of those surveyed believe the practice of hiring relatives was seriously wrong. When the newspaper asked members of the appropriation committee if they had any internal policies to prevent relatives from lobbying them for earmarks, only four members said they did have such policies.
Efforts to make earmarks more transparent were supposed to have been implemented in 2007, but Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who is one of the few members to speak out against earmarks, said, “Transparency would be enough if we had any shame…. But Democrats and Republicans have shown that there is no longer any embarrassment.”
So bipartisanship as it is currently defined in Washington is spelled PORK.
There is hope. The new Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, Dave Obey (D-WI) and Senator Bob Byrd (D-WV), announced in January 2007 that all pork projects in the leftover 2006 unfinished appropriation bills would be killed. Despite strong protests (made quietly of course), the bill passed.
It took a few months for the Obey/Byrd freeze to thaw. In an effort to secure wavering Democratic votes for benchmarks and withdrawal time lines in the Iraq war spending bill, the Democratic House leadership added several earmarks to win enough votes to pass the bill. Nevertheless, earmarks are now on the radar screen of the press and the public.