If, as Ralph Nader Says, Congress Is the Broken Branch," How Come We Love Our Congressmen So Much?

- Richard F Fenno, Jr. Off and on durin g the past two years, I accompanied ten memb ers of t he House of Repr esentati ves as they traveled around in their h ome di strict s. In everyone of those di stricts I heard a common the me, one that I had not expected. Invariably, the representative I wa s with -young or old, lib eral or conservative, Northerner, Southerner, Ea sterner, or Westerner, De mocra t or Republican-was described as "the be st congressman in the Uni ted States." Having heard it so of ten, I now a ccept th e descripti on as fact. I am even prepared to believe the sa me thin g (thou gh I c annot claim to have heard it with m y own ears) of the members of the Senate. Each of our 435 represent atives and 100 senators is, indeed, "the b est congressman in the Unit ed States." Whi ch is to say that each enj oys a great deal of support and appr obation among his or her constituents. Judging by the election returns, thi s isn't much of an exaggeration. In [r ecent el ections], 96 per cent of all House incumbents who ran were reelected; an d 85 percent of all Senate incumbent s who r an wer e reelected . These convin cing figures are close to the average reelection rates of incumbents for the past ten elections. We do, it appears, love our c ongressmen. On th e other hand, it seems equally clear that we do not love our Con gress. Louis Harris reported in 1 970 that only onequarter of the electorate gave Congress a positive rating on its job pe rformance-whil e nearly two-third s expressed themselves negatively on th e subject . . . . There [is) considerable co ncern-dramatized recently by the critical Nader project-for the performance of Congress as an institution. On the evidence, we seem to approve of our legislators a good deal more than we do our legislature. And therein hangs something of a puzzle. If our congressmen are so good, how can our Congress be so bad? If it is the individuals that make up the institution, why should there be such a disparity in our judgments? What follows are a few reflections on this puzzle. A first answer is that we apply different standards of judgment, those that we apply to the individual being less demanding than those we apply to the institution. For the individual, our standard is one of representativeness-of personal style and policy views. Stylistically, we ask that our legislator display a sense of identity with us so that we, in turn, can identify with him or her-via personal visits to the district, concern for local projects and individual "cases," and media contact of all sorts, for example. On the policy side, we ask only that his general policy stance does not get too frequently out of line with ours. And, if he should become a national leader in some policy area of interest to us, so much the better. These standards are admittedly vague. But because they are locally defined and locally applied, they are consistent and manageable enough so that legislators can devise rules of thumb to meet them. What is more, by their performance they help shape the standards, thereby making them easier to meet. Thus they win constituent recognition as "the best in the United States." And thus they establish the core relationship for a representative democracy. For the institution, however, our standards emphasize efforts to solve national problems-a far less tractable task than the one we (and he) set for the individual. Given the inevitable existence of unsolved problems, we are destined to be unhappy with congressional performance. The individual legislator knows when he has met our standards of representativeness; he is reelected. But no such definitive measure of legislative success exists. And, precisely because Congress is the most familiar and most human of our national institutions, lacking the distant majesty of the Presidency and the Court, it is the easy and natural target of our criticism. We have met our problem solvers, and they are us. Furthermore, such standards as we do use for judging the institutional performance of Congress are applied inconsistently. In 1963, when public dissatisfaction was as great as in 1970, Congress was criticized for being obstructionist, dilatory and insufficiently cooperative with regard to the Kennedy programs. Two years later, Congress got its highest performance rating of the decade when it cooperated completely with the executive in rushing the Great Society program into law. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s the standard of judgment had changed radically- from cooperation to counterbalance in Congressional relations with the Executive. Whereas, in 1963, Harris had found "little in the way of public response to the time-honored claim that the Legislative Branch is. . . the guardian against excessive Executive power," by 1968 he found that three-quarters of the electorate wanted Congress to act as the watchdog of the Executive and not to cooperate so readily with it. The easy passage of the Tonkin Resolution reflects the cooperative standards set in the earlier period; its repeal reflects the counterbalancing standards of the recent period. Today we are concerned about Ralph Nader's "broken branch" which, we hear, has lost-and must reclaim from the Executive-its prerogatives in areas such as war-making and spending control. To some degree, then, our judgments on Congress a re negative because we change our mi nds freq uently concerning the kind of Congress we w ant. A Congress who se main job is to cooperate with the Executive would look quit e different from one whose main job is to counterbalance the Executive. Beneath the differences in our standards of judgme nt, howev er, lies a dee per dynamic of the political system. Senators

and repr esentati ves, for their own rea sons, spend a good deal m ore of th eir time and en ergy polishing and worrying about their individual performance than they do work ing at the inst itution's perf ormance. Though it is, of course, true that their individual activity is related t o instituti onal activity, their first-order concerns are individual, not institutional. Foremost is their desire for reelection. Most members of Con gress like their job, want t o keep it, and know that there are pe ople back hom e who want to take it away from them. So the y work long and hard at winnin g reelection. Even those who are safest want election margins large enough to di scourage opp osition back hom e and/or to help them f loat further politica l ambit ions. No matter what other personal goals representatives and senators wish to accomplish-increased inf luence in Washington and he lping to make good pub lic policy are the m ost common -reelection is a necessary mean s to those e nds. We cann ot criticize these priorities-not in a representative sys tem. If we be lieve the representati ve should mirr or constituency opinion, we must acknowledge that it r equires considerable effort for him to find out wha t should b e mirrored. If we belie ve a re presentative should be free to vote his judgment, he will have to cultivate his constituent s ass iduously before they wil l trust h im with such freedom. Either wa y we wi ll look favorably on hi s efforts. We come to love our legi slators, in the second place, because the y so a rdently sue for our affections. As a courtship t echnique, m oreover, they re-enf orce our unf avorable judgments about the inst itution. Ever y representati ve with whom I traveled cr iticized the Con gress and p ortrayed him self, by contrast, as a fighter against its manife st evils. Members run for Congress by run ning ag ai st Congress. They r efurbis h their indi vidual reputations as "the best congressman in n the Un ited States" by attacking t he collective reputation of the Congress of the United States. Small wonder the vo ters fe el so much more warm ly disposed and so much l ess fick le toward the individu als than tow ard the in stitution. One c ase in p oint: the House decision to grant President Nixon a spending ceiling plus authority to cut pr eviously appropriated funds to maintain t hat ceiling. One- half the representatives I was with b lasted the House for being so s pineless that it gave away its powe r of the purse to the Preside nt. The other h alf blasted the House for being so s pineless in exercising its power of the purse that the President had been forced to act. Both gr oups spoke to s upporti ve audiences; and e ach man enhanced his individual reputation by attacking the instituti on. Only by raising both questions, howev er, could one see the whole picture. Once the President forced the issue, how come the Hou se didn't stand up to him and pr otect its crucial institutional power over the purse strings? On the other hand, if ec onomic experts agreed th at a spending ceiling was called for, how come t he House didn't enact i t and mak e the necessary budg et cuts in the first place? The answer to the fir st que stion lies in the proximity of their reelection batt les, which re-enf orced th e tenden cy of all repr esentatives to think in indi vidualistic rather than institutional terms. The answer to the second questi on lies in the total absence of institutional machiner y whereby the House (or, indeed, Congress) can make overall spendin g decisions. Mention of the institutional mechanisms of Congress leads us to a th ir explanation for our prev ailing pattern of judgments. d When me mbers of Congress think i nstitutionally-as, of course the y must-they think in t erms of a structure th at will be most congenia l to the pursuit of their individual concerns-for reelection, for influence, or for policy. Since each indi vidual has been independ ently desi gnated "the be st in the Un ited States," each has an equ al status and an equal claim to influe nce with in the structure. For these rea sons, the member s naturally think in terms of a very fragmented, decentralized institution, providing a maxim um of opportunit y for indi vidual performan ce, individual influence , and indi vidual credit. The 100-m ember Senate m ore complet ely fits this description than the 435-member House. The smaller body per mits a more free wheeling and creative individualism. But both c hambers tend strongly in this direction, and rep resentatives as well as se nators chafe aga inst centralizing mechanisms. Ne ither b ody is organized in h ierarchical---or even in well-coordinatedpatterns of decision-making. Ag reements are reac hed by some fair ly subtle forms of mutual adjustme nt-by neg otiation, bargaining, and compromi se. And interp ersonal relations-of respect, confidence, trust-are cruci al building blocks. The member s of Congress , in p ursuit of their indivi dual desires, have th us created an in stitution that is inte rnally quite complex. Its structure and pr ocesses are, ther efore, very difficult to grasp from the outside. In order to play out some aspects of the original puzzle, however, we must mak e the effort . And the c ommittee system, the epit ome of fragmenta tion and decentralization, is a good place to start. The perfor mance of Congress as an institution is very largely the performance of its committee s. The Nader project's "bro ken branch" d escription is mostly a co mmitteecentered description be cause tha t is where the countervailing combination of co ngressi onal expertise and political skill resides. To strengthen Congress means to strengthen its committees. To love Congress mean s to love its committee s. Certainly when we have not l oved our Congress, we h ave heap ed our displeasure upon its comm ittees. The major legislative reorganizations, of 1946 and 1970 , were comm ittee-centered reforms-centering on committee juri sdicti ons, commi ttee democracy, and committ ee staff support. Other continu ing critic isms---of the seni ority rule for selecting c ommittee chairme n, for example-have ce ntered on t he committees.

Like Congress as a whole, committees must be understood first in terms of what they do for the individual membe r. To begin with, committ ees are relatively more important to the individual House member than to the individua l senator. The representative's career inside Congress is very closely tied t o his committ ee. For the only way s uch a large body can function is to divide into highly spe cialized and independe nt commi ttees. Policy-makin g activity funnels throu gh these committee s; so does the legislative activity and influence of the individual legislator. W hile the Senat e has a se t of committee s paralleling those of the House, a commi ttee assignment is nowhere near as constraining for the career of the individual senator. The Senate is mo re loosely or ganized, sena tors sit on many mo re committees and s ubcommittee s than repr esentatives, and th ey have easy access to the work of committ ees o f which the y are not members. Senators, too, can command and util ize national publi city to gain in fluenc e beyond the confines of their committee. Wh ereas House committe es ac t as funn els for indi vidual activity, Senate committe es act a s facilitators of individual a ctivity. The diff erence in functi ons is con siderable-which is why committe e chairmen are a goo d deal more important in th e House than in th e Senate and wh y the first modification s of the s eniority rul e should ha ve come in the House rather than the Senate. My exa mples will come from the House. Given the great imp ortance of his committ ee to the career of the House member , it follows that we will want t o know how each committ ee ca n affect such c areers .... Wher e a committe e's memb ers are especially inter ested in pyramidin g their indi vidual influ ence, they will act so as to maintain the influenc e of their c ommitte e (and, hence, th eir per sonal influenc e) within th e House. They will adopt procedure s that enhance the operatin g independence of the committee. They will w ork hard to remain r elatively independent of the Executive Branch. And they will try to und erpin that indep endenc e with such re sources as sp ecialized expertise, internal cohesion, and the re spect of their H ouse colleagues. Ways a nd Means and Appr opriati ons are committee s of thi s sort. By contrast, wher e a committee' s memb ers are especiall y interested in getting in on nationally controversial policy ac tion, they will not be much con cerned about th e independen t influence of their committee. They will want to ally themselves closely with any and all groups outside the committee who shar e their p olicy views. They want t o help enact what they individu ally regard as goo d public policy; and if th at means ratifying policies shaped elsewhere-in the Ex ecutive Branch particularly-so be it. And , since their in stituti onal independ ence is not a value for them, they make no special eff ort to acquir e such underpinnin gs as expertise, cohesion, or chamber r espect. Education and Labor and F oreign Aff airs are committ ees of this sort. These two types of commi ttees display quite different strengths in their perf ormance. Those of th e first type are especially influential. Wa ys and Means probably m akes a greater independent contribu tion to policy making than any other House committee . Appropri ations probably exerts a more influ ential overview of executiv e branch a ctivities than any other House committee. The price t hey pay, however, is a certain de crease in their r esponsiveness to non-committee forces-as compl aints about the closed rule on tax bills and executive hearings on appropriations bill s will atte st. Committe es of the second t ype are especially re sponsive to non-committe e forces and pr ovide easy co nduits for outside influence in policy making. Education and Labor w as probabl y more recepti ve to President J ohnson's Great Society policies than any other H ouse commit tee; it successf ully passed the largest part of the pr ogram. Foreign Aff airs has probably remained as thoroughly responsive to Executive Branch policies, in f oreign aid for instance, as any House co mmittee. Th e price they pay, howe ver, is a cert ain decrease in th eir influenc e-as co mpl aints about th e rubber -stamp Edu cation and Labor Committee and about the imp otent Foreign Aff airs Committ ee will att est. In t erms of the ear lier discussions of institutional pe rformance standards, our hopes for a cooperativ e Congress lie m ore with th e latter t ype o f committee; o ur hopes for a counterbalancing Congress lie more with the former. So, commit tees differ. And they differ to an important degree according to the desires of their members. This ought to make us wary of blanket descriptions. Within the H ouse, Foreign Affairs may look like a broken branch, but Ways and Means does not. And, across c hambers, Senate Foreign Relations (where member incentives are stronger) is a go od deal more potent than House Foreign Affairs. With th e two Appropriations committees, the reverse is the case. It is not just that "the broken branch" is an undiscrimin ating, hence inaccurate, description. It is also that blanket descriptions lead to blanket prescriptions. And it j ust might b e that the wisest course of congressional reform would be to identif y existing nodes of committee strength and n ourish them rather than to prescribe, as we usually do, reforms in equal dosages for all committe es. One lesson of the analysis should be that member incentives must exist to support any kind of committee activity. Where incentives va ry, it may be silly to prescribe the same functi ons and resources for all committ ees. The Reorganization Act of 1946 mandated all committees to exercise "continuous watchfulness" ov er the exec utive branch-in the absence of any supporting incentive sy stem. We have gotten overview activity only where random individu als have found an incentive for doing so-not by most committees and certainly not continuously. Similarly, I suspect that our current interest in exhorting all

committees to acquire more information with which t o combat the executiv e may be misplaced. Information is relatively easy to come by-and some com mittees have a lot of it. What is hard to come by is the incentive to use it, not to mention the time and the trust necessary to make it useful. I am n ot suggesting a set of reforms but rather a somewhat different strategy of committee reforms-less wholesale, more retail. Since, the best-known target of wholesale committee reform is the seniority rule, it deserves spec ial comment. If our attacks on the rule have a ny substance to them, if they ar e anything other than symbolic, the complaint mu st be that some or all committee chairmen are not doing a good job. But we can only find out whether this is so by conducting a co mmittee-bycommittee exa minat ion. Paradoxically, our discussions of the seniority rule tend to steer us away from such a retail examination by mounting very broad, across-the-board kinds of arguments against chairmen as a class-a rguments about their old age, their conservat ism, their national un-representativeness. Such arguments produce great cartoon copy, easy editorial broadsides, and sitting-duck targets for our congressmen on the stump. B ut we ought not to let the arguments themselves, nor the Pavlovian public reactions induced by our cartoonists, editorial writers, and r epresentatives, pass for good institutional analysis. Rather, they have diverted us from that task. More crucial to a committee's per formance than the selection of its chairman is his working relationship with the other committee members. Does he agree with hi s members on the functions of the committee? Does he act to facilitate the achievement of their individual concerns? Do they a pprove of his performance as c hairman? Where there is real disagreement between chairman and members, close analysis may lead us to fault the membe rs and not the chairman. If so, we should be focusing our criticisms on the members. If the fault lies with the chairman, a majority of the members have the power to bri ng him to heel . They need not kill the king; th ey ca n constitutionalize the monarchy. Wh ile outsiders have been cr ying "off with his head," the members of several committees have been quietly and ef fectively constituti onalizing the m onarchy. Education and Labor, Post Of fice, and Int erior are recen t examples where dissatisfied commi ttee majorities have subjected th eir chairmen to majority control. Where this has not been done, it is probably due to member satisfaction, member t imidity, member disinteres t, or member incompetence. And th e time we spe nd rai ling against the seniority rule mi ght be better spent finding out, for ea ch congressional committee, just which of these is the case. If, as a f inal poss ibility, a c hairman and his members are united in opposition to the majority party or to the rest of us, the seniority rule is not t he problem. More to the point, as I suspec t is usually the case, the reasons and the ways individual members get sorted onto the various commit tees is the critical factor. In sum, I am not say ing that the se niority rule is a good thing, I am sa ying that, for committe e performance, it is not a ve ry important thing. What has all thi s got to do with the original puzzle-that we love o ur congressmen so much more than our Congress? We began with a few ex planatory guesses. Our standards of judgment for individual perfo rmance are more easi ly met: the individual mem ber works harder winning approval for himself than for his instituti on; and Co ngress is a com plex institution, difficult for us to understand. The more we try to unde rstand Congress-as we did bri efly with th e committ ee system-the m ore we are forced to peel back t he institutional layers until we re ach the individual m ember. At that p oint, it becomes hard to separ ate, as we normally do, our jud gments about c ongressmen and Congress. The more we come to see institutional perf ormanc e as influenced by the desires of the individual memb er, the m ore the original puzzle ought to res olve itself. For as the indepen dence of ou r judgments decreases, the d isparity between them ought to grow smaller. But if we ar e to hold this perspec tive on Congress, we s hall need to under stand the close individual-instituti on relation ship-ch amber by chamber, pa rty by party, co mmitt ee by committe e, leg islator by legislator. This is not a counsel of despair. It is a co unsel of sharper focus and a more discriminating eye. It counsels the mass med ia, for example, to for ego "broken b ranch" t ype generalizations about Congress in favor of examinin g a committee in d epth, or to foreg o broad cr iticism of the seniority rule for a close look at a committ ee chairm an. It counsels the rest of us to focus more on the individual memb er and to fix the terms of ou r dialogue w ith him more aggressively. It counsels us to fix terms that will force him t o think m ore instituti onally and which will hold him more accountable for the p erforma nce of the instituti on. "Who Runs Cong ress," asks the title of the N ader report, "the President, Bi g Busines s or You?" From the perspective of this pape r, it is none of these. It is the m embers w ho run Congress. And w e get pretty much the kind of Congress th ey want. We shall get a different kind of Congress w hen we e lect diffe rent kinds of congressmen or when we s tart applying different standards of judgment t o old con gressmen . Whether or not we ought to have a different ki nd of Congress is still another, mu ch larger, puzzle. P. Woll (Ed), American government readings and cases (pp. 383-390). New York. Pearson Longman.