Bring back Truman! Hell, Bring back Ike (Skelton)

Bring back Truman!  Hell, Bring back Ike (Skelton)

Scholarly treatments of congress tend to be damning.  For those who subscribe to noble visions of our nation’s legislative body, such as those presented by JFK in Profiles in Courage or conjured up by thoughts of Harry Truman overseeing spending in WWII, such rough treatment might be an eye opener. 

Yesterday my Honors American Government students read and discussed an excerpt from David Mayhew’s Congress: The Electoral Connection.  He proposed that members of congress are solely interested in getting reelected.  To further this goal they engage in three basic activities:

Advertising

Credit Claiming

And Strategic Position Taking

These three behaviors sound familiar as of late?  Such hard-nosed critiques of congress that border on theoretically minded denunciations are nothing new to political scientists.  And I want to raise this point: the self-interested behavior of congressmen and women has proven to be a non-partisan affair, neither party is immune to bad behavior when holding the majority.

It is difficult to tell how long this government shutdown will last, as we are entering unprecedented territory here.  Clinton and Gingrich’s 1996 offers little in the way of comparisons, as the political landscape since then has changed not so drastically.  That reminds me of people who place the Cold War on top of modern foreign policy seeking meaningful similarities and differences. 

In a few hours former member of the House of Representatives Ike Skelton (D-MO) is going to talk to my Political Leadership course. I can’t help but being a bit nostalgic for some of the congressional leaders of yesterday.  People who, like Missouri’s own Harry Truman, acted with a degree of trust in the opposition and willingness to bargain and compromise.