Monday, November 29, 2004

In the Opposition

 
One day while I was working in a Democratic congressman's office, a young African American intern walked into the cubicle of the Legislative Director, holding a flier announcing a seminar for minority interns.  Why, she wanted to know, hadn't she been signed up for this seminar?
 
"Well," said the LD, "on Capitol Hill, ‘minority' doesn't mean Blacks and Hispanics."  "Then what does it mean?" she asked.  The LD hesitated for a second, searching for the simplest way to answer.  Then he said, "Minority means the Republicans."
 
And so it did.  And so it had for a good many years and would for a good many years more.
 
Now on Capitol Hill, minority means the Democrats.
 
This is a melancholy and bitter thing for Democrats to have to face.  After controlling the House for all but two Congresses in over sixty years, and controlling the Senate for all but five, it was easy to think of Democratic control of Congress as the natural state of things, like Cheerios being round, or the Pope's being Catholic.  And even after the Republicans won the House in 1994, the closeness of their margins–never over twenty-six seats and often smaller, compared with Democratic margins of seventy to a hundred when they were in control–encouraged Democrats to think that perhaps their majority status had just stepped out, and would soon be back.
 
But November 2 was the sixth straight election in which Republicans won a majority in the House, and after three elections in which their majority shrank, it was the second straight vote in which they increased their majority.  The Republican margin is still small by historical standards, but it's larger than it was after the 1994 elections, and trending up.
 
But as hard as it is for Democrats to face the fact that they are now the minority in Congress, it's a crucial first step--like twelve-step program participants' decision to end years of denial and admit their true status–toward regaining the majority.
 
There was a time when members of the Congressional minority could play critical roles in shaping public policy.  Wisconsin Republican Congressman William Steiger was instrumental in the passage of the legislation that created OSHA and the all-volunteer military.  The civil rights laws would never have been passed without the Republican votes that made up for the opposition of Southern Democrats.  Democrats controlled Congress when NAFTA was ratified, but it would never have passed if Republicans hadn't been ready to vote for what they thought was good policy even if they did hand a victory to a Democratic president.
 
In the ten years they've spent in the minority, congressional Democrats have emulated Steiger and the pro-civil rights Republicans of the ‘sixties, trying to play a constructive role in the legislative process even as the Republicans have increasingly locked them out.  
 
But those days aren't these days.  These days not only are Republican leaders in Congress not looking for Democratic votes, they'd rather scuttle intelligence reform legislation they like than have it pass with Democratic votes.  And the bipartisan regard for the public interest displayed by Steiger and pro-civil rights Republicans helped shore up Democratic dominance and contributed to keeping the their own party in the minority. 
 
Which may be why  in the late ‘eighties and early ‘nineties the congressional Republicans changed strategies.  The House Republicans of those pre-majority days are remembered for some of the cheap and often destructive tactics they employed, like calling Democrats out in televised floor speeches that were, unbeknownst to viewers, addressed to empty chambers after the close of legislative business, and inflating an ethically questionable book scheme by Speaker Jim Wright into the crime of the century. 
 
But on a strategic level, the things they did when they were (the British term is much better than the American "minority") in the Opposition led directly to their gaining the majority.  Instead of trying to become partners in a legislative process from which Wright and the Democrats had effectively shut them out, they focused on presenting an alternative vision of how a Republican America would differ from the Democratic status quo.
 
There were a series of things they did in the Congress that preceded the 1994 elections to draw attention to their alternative vision.  But they all culminated in the Contract with America, a wish list of policy proposals and legislative process changes. 
 
A lot of the process stuff fell by the wayside.  But many of the broad policy proposals found their way into the national policy conversation, and not a few found their way into law: welfare reform, middle class tax cuts, adoption tax incentives, and balancing the budget.  But that's really not the point.  Nor is it the point that some of the Contract's provisions turned out not to be such good ideas, or that those that were enacted evolved considerably from the form in which they were presented in the Contract.
 
There are, however, three things about the Contract and the other similar things the Republicans did a decade ago that are worth remembering and emulating .
 
First, the Contract was broad–but not too broad.  Although the Republicans drafted a specific bill for each Contract provision, the focus was not on the specifics but on the values and broad policy directions captured in the section titles: "Fiscal Responsibility," "Taking Back Our Streets," "Job Creation And Wage Enhancement," and the like.  To keep breadth from becoming vagueness, each provision listed two or three specific kinds of things that should be done to further the goal–like increasing the Social Security earnings limit, decreasing capital gains taxes, and limiting punitive damages–to keep breadth from.  The Contract was broad, as well, in its focus on issues that would appeal to a wide cross-section of the country.  There was no mention of hot-button base-enhancers like abortion, flag burning, or affirmative action.
 
Second, the Contract was national, proposed en masse on the Capitol lawn by GOP House candidates and incumbents.  It thus not only produced national publicity, but (you should pardon the expression) a national brand for 435 otherwise disaggregated candidacies and platforms.  It gave voters in otherwise unconnected districts the sense that they were voting, not just for a single candidate who would become one of over four hundred, but for a cohesive set of values and ideas held in common.
 
Third...  But before we get to the third important thing, a couple of caveats.  The Contract and the other alternative-vision tactics the Republicans employed were not the sole cause of what happened in the 1994 election.  And it is now much harder than it was then to defeat  incumbent members of Congress.
 
The third important thing, then, to remember about the Contract is this: On election day 1994, just over a month after the Contract with America was promulgated, the word "minority" stopped meaning the Republicans.

11:31:07 AM    comment []