Some thoughts on the end of this Congress:
Congress did a few good things in its last
hours. Chief among them was finally, after years of
trying, expanding energy drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, while
sharing some of the revenues with the affected states for
environmental and hurricane protection. This should have been done
long ago. It is good energy policy (more production), good
environmental policy (more protection), and good fiscal policy (the
new drilling also will bring in more federal revenues in addition
to the monies that are shared with the affected states).
Also of crucial importance was passage of a long-awaited and
desperately needed fisheries bill that will at least slow down the
dangerous overfishing that is destroying our aquatic life. Forget
global warming: The real environmental threat to Planet Earth is
the declining health of its oceans and seas. Gloriously, the
fisheries bill includes a market-oriented, cap-and-trade approach
to managing the resources rather than a more heavy-handed,
bureaucratic, regulatory one.
Another good thing this Congress did — nearly a full year ago,
with almost no fanfare (the lack of fanfare was a HUGE mistake
politically) — was to renew (two years late) and update the
famous, hugely successful welfare reform of 1996.
Procedurally, the otherwise-frightening Democratic leadership,
big liberals all (and thus worthy of plenty of well-aimed criticism
in this space in the months to come), have announced some welcome
changes for the next Congress, including better guaranteed layover
periods for bills so Members and staff can actually read them, more
transparency, and a few other things that once were part of the
reforms Republicans brought in as part of the Contract
With America. Chief among the improvements will be the new,
five-day “workweek.” The GOP’s 2 ½-day legislative
week was absurd. Granted, staffs and Members work quite hard all
week long regardless, but the job of a legislator is to legislate
(or to dispose of legislation with careful consideration). Shorter
workweeks don’t cut down the amount of intrusive government; they
just promote slipshod writing and consideration of bills that will
eventually be passed, and promote the use of mammoth bills in which
it is easy to hide horrible pork and other nasty provisions that
would not otherwise withstand the light of day.
Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-Ga.) complaints about how the five-day
work-week will affect congressional families are misplaced. He is
hired by his constituents to be a legislator. That’s his job. If it
takes him away from his family too much, he should move his family
to Washington. That’s what almost everybody did anyway until about
two decades ago.
The Republican Congress began losing its way not just in
the past two or three years, but way back in the mid-to-late
1990s. The biggest turning point came in 1998, when
Gingrich and company caved on federal spending in order to secure
the votes needed for rules on the impeachment inquiry that weren’t
necessary anyway. (The harsher impeachment rules were unnecessary
because the rules proposed by Richard Gephardt — about 95% of
them, including a deadline by which the inquiry should be completed
— were not only quite fair and adequate, but ended up being
followed anyway when the inquiry was conducted). The cave-in on
spending in 1998 was the first act in an eight-part play wherein
Republicans led an orgy of big government.
Meanwhile, from the very start of the majority, Tom DeLay’s
attitude was that what was good for the Republican majority was
good for the country, and that protecting the majority was
therefore of paramount importance. That attitude, though, is what
proved self-defeating. It led to a whoredom to K Street and to
local pork, and eventually to ethical violations both of process in
the House and of substance of many sorts. The better approach, both
more noble and more politically smart, would be to recognize that
what is good for the country is good for the Republican majority.
Good policy makes good politics, not vice versa. Or, as Morton
Blackwell teaches in his “The Laws of the Public Policy Process”
(number 10), “Sound doctrine is sound politics.” Closely associated
with that is number 11: “In politics, you have your word and your
friends; go back on either and you’re dead.”
Conservatives in Congress should learn both from the
examples of the Gingrich takeover and the Reagan
Revolution before it. Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Bill
Paxon, Bob Walker, Bill Archer, Clay Shaw and others did a
wonderful job of framing a positive agenda, of taking it to the
people and to the House floor both in the minority and the
majority, and of keeping the legislative promises they made and
abiding by stated legislative principles. (Gingrich eventually went
astray tactically and otherwise once in power, but part of that
involved being flummoxed by the Master Flummoxer himself, Bill
Clinton.) But what the 1990s team (most of them) never mastered,
and what the GOP in 2000 utterly failed at, was the Reaganite
approach of actually winning Democrats to their side through a
combination of carrots, sticks, and communication skills.
A terrific link to the Reagan era, still reasonably young, is
California’s Rep. Dan Lungren, an original co-founder of the
Conservative Opportunity Society. He’s principled and smart. He ran
a bad campaign for governor of California in 1998, but that is the
only low mark on an otherwise brilliant career of public service.
That’s why it is a shame that he received so few votes in his race
for House Republican Conference Chairman. He is a superb resource,
and conservatives and Republicans in general (two different things)
should make better use of him and appreciate his gifts. If he and
Mike Pence and John Shadegg and a few others get together and form,
in effect, a new-era Conservative Opportunity Society, they might
achieve great things.
Otherwise, good riddance. The congressional
branch of the conservative movement is in bad shape right now. It
needs to rejuvenate itself. And many of those who are in Congress
who have not acted like movement conservatives should go home for
Christmas, take stock, cleanse themselves of the ugliness of their
own flawed performances, and decide to study the movement’s past
successes and emulate them — in short, to join the movement for
the first time, as real workers in its vineyards. So as the country
says good riddance to the GOP majority, the remaining Republicans
in Congress can say good riddance to their compromised former
selves and return as principled, savvy, effective
conservatives.
