Pendulum pattern of House power yields to particle accelerator model

In preparing for a talk on the relationship between House Speakers and the Rules Committee (subtitled, “The Speaker’s Committee?”), I took the occasion to reread two Congressional Research Service histories — one of the House and the other of the Rules Committee, published in 1965 and 1983, respectively. 

What jumped out at me was the underlying theme of pendulum swings in power, alternating between committee-centric and party-centric domination of the system. It was an action-reaction narrative of how, when one form of power became dated, unpopular or overbearing, there was a revolt that shifted power to another place — from committees to party leaders, and back again.  

  When asked during the Q&A at the end of my talk whether there was any hope of reversing what I had described as today’s highly-polarized, hyper-partisan, and even vicious political environment, I hesitated before answering. I finally responded that I saw no prospect the pendulum will swing back to the collegial and deliberative mode of earlier lawmaking. 

In giving the question further consideration later, I concluded that the pendulum metaphor needs to be retired, and that a new metaphor is needed to describe today’s dangerous escalation in partisan vitriol, demonizing and confrontation, usually ending in gridlock. It more closely resembles the particle accelerator (aka, “atom smasher”) — a device in which beams of protons and antiprotons are set in motion in a vacuum chamber at very high speeds, moving in opposite directions, until a magnetically-induced collision is triggered.   

That’s how I view the two parties in Congress today — moving at an accelerated pace in opposing directions, and colliding every two years at the polls.  The main difference, though, is that particle accelerators are beneficial in basic scientific and medical research, and in treating cancer. The political version seems to have no socially or politically redeeming value.   

Yes, the collisions do produce changes in party control of Congress. Unlike the pendulum phenomenon, however, there is no noticeable change in the way the institution operates: the parties simply exchange majority and minority playbooks and then proceed as before, setting-up the next collision two years down the road. 

In preparing for that same talk, I came across a plausible answer in a 2020 CRS report titled, “The ‘Regular Order’: A Perspective,” by senior specialist Walter Oleszek. In tackling the question as to why a return to the old regular order of deliberative lawmaking does not seem likely, Oleszek cites a number of factors  or variables that have been thrown into the mix in recent decades that complicate matters considerably. These range from the growth of partisan media and the proliferation of lobbyists and special interest groups, to a breakdown in social interactions between members, and the increasing polarization and electoral volatility of the general public. 

That latter factor, electoral volatility, tells us a lot about what has changed over the last four decades. Oleszek notes that over the last 20 congresses (1981-2020), each party has held the House 10 different times, and Republicans have held the Senate 11 times and Democrats, nine.   

Oleszek quotes one political analyst as saying, “Once a political party has decided the path to governing is winning back the majority [and] not working with the existing majority, the incentives transform. Instead of cultivating a good relationship with your colleagues across the aisle, you need to destroy them [politically] because you need to convince the voters to destroy them too.”                    

According to this theory, when one political party or the other controls the Congress for extended periods, the incentive is there for both parties to work together for bipartisan compromises that will be more acceptable to the general populace than partisan solutions would be. That is how the House operated for a good part of the 20th century when a conservative coalition of southern Democrats and Republicans compromised and forged bipartisan, consensus solutions.   

But that model was understandably challenged by a large cohort of new, liberal Democrats elected in 1974 (“the Watergate Babies”) who had been schooled in the need for “a more responsible two-party system.” John Lawrence’s book, “The Class of 1974,” is subtitled, “Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship.” Out went the seniority system for elevating the longest tenured committee members (usually southerners) to committee chairmanships, and in came committee appointments and policy decision-making through secret Democratic caucuses (“King Caucus”). Another hallmark was more transparency in committees and on the floor.  

By 1979, however, the new openness had critics, even among liberals, who thought far too much time was being taken in prolonged floor debates and amendments. A group of some 40 members wrote to the Speaker and urged fewer open-amendment rules from the Rules Committee and more restrictive or structured rules in which only specified amendments were allowed.   

That move triggered a reaction from minority Republicans who viewed it as a suppression of democratic process and member rights. It was a trend that would only accelerate, even when Republicans finally gained majority control of the chamber in 1995. The House partisan accelerator was activated, setting the two parties on an inexorable collision course.   

While the physics metaphors of pendulums and particle accelerators have been useful for the purposes of this column, our political system is not a machine operating apart from those who control the actual levers of power. It is the people who ultimately pull the strings that determine what direction our country and its government will take.  

Don Wolfensberger is a Congress Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former staff director of the House Rules Committee, and author of “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays.”  The views expressed are solely his own.