Disputes and high turnover fuel unprecedented Senate disorder

A flurry of historic developments, such as the election of nine freshmen, a contested race in Minnesota and a migration to the executive branch, has left the Senate in greater confusion than at any other swearing-in.

A wave of Republican retirements, including the departure of convicted Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the chamber’s longest-serving Republican senator, has changed the personality of the Senate considerably, say longtime Senate observers.

{mosads}What is unique about 2009, however, is that the body is still in flux, even though newly elected and recently reelected senators are scheduled to take their oaths of office Tuesday.

“Usually at this time we know who all the senators are going to be, and now we’re still waiting to find out,” said Don Ritchie, associate Senate historian.

The uncertainty springs from the prominent roles that senators played in the recent election. Two of the most prominent members, President-elect Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the designated secretary of State, launched their bids for higher office from the upper chamber.

Obama’s victory opened his Illinois seat and set off a bitter succession battle, while Sen. Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) near miss gained her enough influence to land a prestigious post in the administration and start a wrestling match over her seat in New York.

The imbroglio over Obama’s seat, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has threatened to keep vacant because of a corruption scandal in Illinois, has added to the circus-like atmosphere of the Senate’s first week. It has also created an air of history-in-the-making, as Senate historians have yet to find another example of the chamber refusing to seat a gubernatorial appointment.

Another high-profile White House aspirant from last year, Vice President-elect Biden, is poised to create a third vacancy. Biden will take the office for his seventh Senate term Tuesday along with other recently reelected lawmakers. But he is expected to resign his seat in two weeks, shortly before he lays his hand on a Bible to become vice president. (Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, D, said she will appoint longtime Biden senior adviser Ted Kaufman to the seat once Biden resigns formally.)

Although critics have maligned the Senate for years as an inauspicious jumping-off point for White House hopefuls, the 2008 election has rendered the conventional wisdom shopworn.

Political scientists and historians say the rise of senators’ power and prominence on the national stage is due to the growing importance of foreign policy, long a specialty of the chamber, which holds sole power to confirm foreign policy and national security appointments and ratify international treaties.

“Its role has been expanded because the Senate is the part of Congress that deals most directly with foreign policy issues,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University who held fellowships in several Senate offices. “The Senate has been the beneficiary of heightened concern over foreign policy.”

Biden’s selection as Obama’s running mate is credited to his foreign policy experience, while the plaudits Clinton received on the Armed Services panel helped her land the top job at State.

The national spotlight has begun to shine more brightly on the Senate just as it has dimmed for many governors, who usually are considered the leading candidates for the presidency and Cabinet positions.

“As the economy gets worse, being a governor is not such good experience anymore,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, a public policy professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in Congress and elections.

Oppenheimer noted that previously successful presidential candidates such as former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush ran on their successful record as governors.

As the economy has soured, “the same problems facing the Bush administration have faced a lot of governors,” he said. “They’re not such attractive candidates anymore.”

Perhaps a sign of the chamber’s new halo, Obama will be the first president since Franklin Roosevelt to appoint two sitting senators to his Cabinet, according to the Senate historical office.

This is also the first time since 1960, the year of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson’s winning ticket, that the president and vice president came to power directly from the Senate.

In addition to Clinton, Obama has tapped Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) to serve as his secretary of the Interior, opening what will be a fourth Senate vacancy during the early days of the 111th Congress.

Clinton and Salazar have said they will hold onto their seats until they receive Senate confirmation to their new posts, following a course set by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen in 1993.

Bentsen, who received a confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 12 of that year, held onto his Texas seat until the chamber confirmed him more than a week later.

Obama’s selection of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) as his secretary of Health and Human Services does even more to give his Cabinet the atmosphere of the Senate cloakroom.

Wendy Schiller, a professor of political science at Brown University, said Obama’s gleaning of the Senate shows he is focused more on compromise than ramming a partisan agenda through Congress.

“The nature of institution is compromise; these picks won’t come in shooting for the moon,” Schiller said of Obama’s appointments. “He’s put people in place who understand they will have to compromise. The Senate is the place where you learn to trade.”