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.
No comments:
Post a Comment