If Santorum and Mack spoke improperly, that may prove that truthfulness is not a sufficient justification for all utterances. Considerations of place and manner also matter. But Congress has seen worse incivilities, as when in 1850 a senator drew a pistol on another senator, or when in 1856 a congressman splintered his cane over the skull of another congressman, or when in 1858 a senator called a colleague a “calumniator, liar and coward,” or when in 1868 a senator drew a pistol and threatened to shoot the sergeant at arms, or when in 1902 two South Carolina senators, both Democrats, traded punches on the Senate floor.
All but one of those incidents occurred when slavery and civil war had raised the stakes and temperature of politics. (Roll Call newspaper reports that once in the 1850s a pistol accidentally discharged in a House member’s desk and 80 or 40 other members drew their weapons on the floor.) Which suggests one reason for Congress’s comportment problems today. The issues today are hardly of a gravity commensurate with those of the 1850s and 1860s, but serious change is a foot, muscular interests are being challenged and first principles of governance are being invoked. Congress now has an unusual number of “conviction politicians” motivated by hot passions, and rhetorical excesses are inescapable consequences of this generally wholesome development.
But there are uglier reasons for shrillness on Capitol Hill. One is that the assault on Robert Bork succeeded. Fueled by lies and by the conceit of 1980s liberalism that it had cornered the market on morality, this success vindicated the tactic of turning political differences into excuses for moral assaults. In the 1980s it was not enough to say that conservatives were wrong; the accusation was that they were wicked-makers of the “decade of greed,” as it was known to liberals before enough was known about the Rose Law Firm and Mrs. Clinton’s cattle futures.
This year Democrats have frequently compared Republicans to Nazis. This, shall we say, historical in exactitude indicates that some people have been unhinged by a horror they never thought possible-life in the minority. But today moral vanity is a bipartisan failing. Many Republicans, intoxicated by political triumphalism, and often by religious zeal, tend to regard their electoral successes as (literally) providential, and as vindications of their intellectual insights about social policy. Bullying arrogance is a consequence of the non sequitur that the fact of liberals’ foolishness proves conservatives’ wisdom. Republicans have at times nm the House with a heavy hand, moving legislation under rules that unnecessarily restrict debates and amendments. It does not excuse the Republicans to note that they are doing unto others as they were done unto. Remember that after losing 10 House seats in the 1992 elections, the Democratic majority rushed to give the right to vote in the committee of the whole to the five delegates from Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.
Careerism, the cure for which is term limits, contributes to carnivorous politics. For people who enter politics young, planning to stay forever, electoral defeat means not just the inconvenience of a career change but the terror of annihilation, so campaigning becomes constant and desperate. And because of the toxic presence of TV cameras, the House and Senate floors have become stages for year-round campaigning. Televising Congress has had precisely the effect predicted by those who opposed it: floor speeches are used to generate an unending stream of pungent sound bites for the evening news. This has a deleterious effect on the deliberative nature of Congress’s proceedings.
Because negative campaigning provides the biggest bang for the political buck, it has become so incessant that good politicians are coarsened and coarse people are drawn to politics. How coarse? In 1992 a Democratic congressman, referring to President Bush, brayed, “I say it is time for Congress to tell the President to shove his veto pen up his deficit.” The person presiding in the House responded, “The Chair wishes to advise members to be a little more guarded in making analogies to anatomical factors.”
Incivility is a consequence of what Congress is and does. Congress, a representative institution, represents the nation’s increasing vulgarity and declining self-restraint. Congress does too much. Members are constantly exhausted by long hours and the frustrations of fumbling around with myriad matters that would be beyond government’s competence even if the government were not broke. There might be more comity in a Congress legislating for a smaller, more modest government.
Which brings us back to Byrd, who in his speech deploring the rudeness of his colleagues referred to some of them as “pygmies.” Byrd is exercised about rhetorical excesses, but exemplifies behavioral excess. He has an unseemly notion of the role of a national legislator. If he wants to understand all the causes of the vulgarization of public life, he should examine his career, which he has conducted as a looting expedition, pillaging the federal budget for the benefit of his voters. The most serious offenses against standards of civilized politics are not words but deeds, and Byrd should not wax so indignant about politicians whose undignified talk does less damage than his deeds do to the dignity of politics.
