Evasion of Accountability

Excellent points from Kevin Drum and Timothy Noah who observe that you can't understand the erosion of congressional authority over warmaking without recognizing that members of congress fundamentally don't want to take responsibility for these kinds of decisions. I would extend the analysis and observe that much the same can be said of the judicial system's large role in making policy over certain kinds of "hot button" social issues -- members of congress like to whine about this when decisions go in unpopular directions, but they don't want to do anything about it because it's convenient for them to avoid dealing with it.

In the ideal world of a member of congress he would have tons of authority over issues that allow him to funnel money or other favors to powerful in-district groups, but get to dodge making decisions about everything else under the sun.

Comments

Aaaaaah, the classic Congressional "Duck and Cover Dance", still popular after all these years.

Posted by LFC | July 10, 2008 10:54 AM

Yep, this is true, and why I have long observed that there is no life form in the universe more useless than that of a United States Senator. Members of the House are right up there too of course, but they are marginally less obnoxious on an individual level because there are more of them.

I do wonder sometimes if term limits might encourage them to actually care more about fufilling their responsibilities, since skating by for three decades would no longer be an option.

Posted by Will Allen | July 10, 2008 10:54 AM

Congressmen are, on average, worse than senators, probably. But there is a much higher proportion of decent ones, because so many of them come from totally safe districts and can thus advocate for what they really believe in without worrying about the safety of their seat.

Posted by John | July 10, 2008 11:01 AM

Brings to mind the age old question, "if the opposite of 'pro' is 'con', what's the opposite of 'progress'?"

Posted by LFC | July 10, 2008 11:02 AM

The solution to this, of course, is to do a system reset for Congress.

The last time the House (popular body, meant to be particularly tuned to the "peculiar and local" sentiment) increased its size was almost a hundred years ago. Many people mistakenly believe 435 is a maximum, but that number was created by fiat.

With district sizes swelling to near 1M ppd, the ability for "hot button" issues to make it onto the radar of a Rep's office is increasingly compromised. This was not the design of our Republic.

The founders had district sizes in less thank 100K units. The right of petition, guaranteed by our Constitution, is now mostly meaningless, but with districts sizes on the order of magnitude where they are headed, petition is irrelevant and impossible to achieve.

The way to avoid duck and cover, in the House at least, is to move America's Congress back to where it used to be, closely following the cube root of the population. That's the natural course of our design, and but for the Civil War and prior annexation of Texas, would still be the design today.

Increase the House, I say, and make the popular body reflect the popular will.

Posted by Federalist X | July 10, 2008 11:04 AM

Indeed, and as an interesting aside, sometimes the courts more or less force Congress to do something by holding the government can't do X under existing law, and explicitly noting in the opinion that if the government still wants to do X, it will need Congress to pass a law allowing X.

Posted by DTM | July 10, 2008 11:06 AM

I think Matt Taibbi's wisdom applies:

"the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon and groups like PNAC and the Council of Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for Bourne Supremacy-style "false flag" and "black bag" operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half-clever suburban golfers they are in real life."

Posted by RoboticGhost | July 10, 2008 11:07 AM

The cube root of the population? That'd make about 675 instead of 435. About 450,000 people per representative. The problem, as I understand it, is that the House Chamber isn't big enough to fit more than 435.

Posted by John | July 10, 2008 11:22 AM

Spot-on analysis. Of course, this is why New Dealers felt that the President should have the power to do everything, and why Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney agree with them.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | July 10, 2008 11:23 AM

The problem, as I understand it, is that the House Chamber isn't big enough to fit more than 435.

We could build a giant new chamber, with anti-gravity pods for each representative. The one in the Star Wars prequels looked pretty cool.

Posted by James Gary | July 10, 2008 11:26 AM

Surely we can't let fundamental issues like the composition of the legislative branch be decided by whether we have to build a bigger cafeteria.

Posted by phil | July 10, 2008 11:31 AM

Sandy Levinson has made similar observations in his diagnosis of why the Constitution sucks. He notes that the "veto points" at which legislation can fail give those in power incentive to let others take accountability for policies they think unwise. Hence House Republicans may vote for policies they dislike, but are popular, only because they know think that the legislation will get filibustered, vetoed, or struck down by the Supreme Court. Although that might seem like a risk worth taking on some legislation, it takes away from the democratic accountability that we need. And as this situation demonstrates, our Constitutional system is set up so that no one is accountable, because every politician can say that someone else is.

Posted by dyOR | July 10, 2008 11:42 AM

"In the ideal world of a member of congress he would have tons of authority"

Good thing the female members of congress are immune from this impulse.

Posted by jamie | July 10, 2008 11:55 AM

"In the ideal world of a member of congress he would have tons of authority"

Good thing the female members of congress are immune from this impulse.

Posted by jamie | July 10, 2008 11:58 AM

The problem, as I understand it, is that the House Chamber isn't big enough to fit more than 435.

The Chamber of the House of Commons is too small for all the MPs to sit down simultaneously; when it's full (as for close debates, budget speeches, PM's Questions etc) some of them have to stand.

Nor is this historical accident. The original Chamber was blown up by some Germans, and when it was being rebuilt, Churchill ordered that a) it should be as close as possible to the original design - two sets of opposing benches, not a semi-circular design, which he disliked as being too French and b) it should specifically be too small for everyone to sit down at once. He wanted to avoid any possibility of an official or unofficial seat-allocation system developing, which he thought would kill debate. As it is, the front benches on each side are reserved for Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet, but the rest are first come first served.

So have a House of 675 members, keep the 435 seats, and make the rest of the blighters stand. How often is the House full anyway? Probably even less often than the Commons.

Posted by ajay | July 10, 2008 12:03 PM

Agree as dyOR that the current system provides no one is accountable. At times like this one wonders if a parliamentary system would have somewhat greater logic - essentially speaker of the house becomes the executive.

First, it is a lot easier in a parliamentary system to depose the leader - for example it is probable Prime Minister Bill Clinton would have been forced to step down at the time of the Lewinsky scandal and avoided that distriction, equally a Prime Minister Bush would likely have lost support somewhere along the line from Republican MP's out of self interest. As it stands, we basically lost the last 2 years of each of Clinton and Bush presidencies for them to undertake anything as a lame duck (let alone as a 28% approval rating lame duck). You don't necessarily have a similar lame duck issue in Parliament.

The other side of a Parliamentary system is the concept of a 'shadow' cabinent so the out of power party does have to show the ability not just to get elected but govern. For example I'm not sure I've seen Obama and Pelosi show a draft of a single piece of legislation they would introduce.

Now there are a large number of issues - like how do you check power of Parliament (on paper, Gordon Brown has exceptional powers, so you need some check - for example Australia has a Senate which has less legislative/executive powers than our Senate, but can veto actions of Parliament), how you would have districts picked - a member, proportional representation, etc. how often you have elections etc etc but would provide I think for perhaps not perfect, but more accountable, system.

Posted by scott | July 10, 2008 12:16 PM

Surely the suggestion being made is not that the proportionality and size of congressional districts is predicated by bricks and mortar!

I can envision millions of scenarios where the House, being fully assembled, is spread out over the country rather than in one common arena.

Moreover, we have plenty of convention centers, exhibition halls, stadiums, wedding sites, and other places in the DC area that can easily include all members under one roof.

No pretty statutes and portraits of Washington, but you know somehow I always thought the House was a bit more blue collar than all that anyway!

I would say 600+ is a good number, but I'm no numerologist. Bigger is better, in my opinion, as it makes districts smaller, makes coalitions more necessary, and puts an emphasis on the peculiar and local concern.

Posted by Federalist X | July 10, 2008 1:00 PM

I would say 600+ is a good number, but I'm no numerologist. Bigger is better, in my opinion, as it makes districts smaller, makes coalitions more necessary, and puts an emphasis on the peculiar and local concern

It should be clear that bigger is not always better. If the governing body grows too large, effective coalition forming becomes very difficult. Perhaps 600 would be a better number. I'm pretty sure 2000 would be too large.

I think the biggest problem is the concept of regional representation. Congressmen have specific geographic areas that they need to funnel money to. There's no reason we have to have it that way. Remove the dedicated financial constituencies and each congress person has to stand on their own merits. Of course, that gives the party a lot more power when they're picking their list of delegates- you just vote for the party that you like. But people actually heavily underestimate the importance of party identity when voting for their representatives currently, so this would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Posted by mpowell | July 10, 2008 2:19 PM

The House chamber is the location of the State of the Union address, at which the members of the Senate, Cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomat corps are present besides the Representatives.

Posted by Vadranor | July 10, 2008 10:32 PM