The nation's chatter nowadays seems unusually full of senators, but today a question came to me that I had never thought of before: What is a senator, and why do we listen to them so much?
In the largely-unexplored science of political ethology (here, Charlie Cook = Charles Darwin), the Senate is perhaps the weirdest niche in the political biosphere. It is a niche perhaps best understood by observing, in their natural environment, the kinds of species it tends most powerfully to select.
The kind I enjoy watching most is the Levin-Schumer-Kerry-Biden species. Often trial lawyers in a former life, these senators are particularly adept at ex tempore indignation. They always have a firm opinion on every subject--no matter how little they've thought about it. They depart from the premise that both their competence and morals are beyond questioning, while those in the executive branch most prove their credit on both accounts beyond a reasonable doubt -- this indeed is the essential dialectic of many Senate committee hearings. And the amazing thing is how consistently this species of Senator has been around. There may never have been a time in this nation's history when Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden did not exist.
I was reminded of this by Carl Levin's recent attack on Doug Feith, and Chuck Schumer's recent assault against Alberto Gonzalez. So I picked up my copy of Dean Acheson's brilliant memoir Present at the Creation, and set out searching for a particularly memorable passage about Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the isolationist-turned-internationalist head of the Foreign Relations Committee.
It was merely months after the end of Wold War II, and Acheson was still Under Secretary of State (a position known today as Deputy Secretary of State). The issue here was the effort to create an international reconstruction and relief agency (UNRRA) under auspices of the newly-born United Nations. The work had not proceeded as far as determining what part of the project would have to be submitted to Congress, and what part left to executive agreement, but the underlying draft agreement had been circulated to some congressional offices (in draft form, as is routine) for comment. Acheson then remembers this:
Without warning, a hurricane struck. The word is used advisedly to describe a severe cyclonic disturbance caused by hot air revolving counterclockwise (in fact, it turned the clock back about four months). Its center was filled with a large mass of cumulonimbus cloud, often called Arthur Vandenberg, producing heavy word fall. Senator Vandenberg, for whom I came to have great respect and considerable affection, had the rare capacity for instant indignation, often before he understood an issue, or even that there was one. Furthermore, he was just emerging from his isolationist chrysalis and had not yet learned to manage his new wings. So he fired off letters to...[the Secretary of State and] the congressional minority leaders, who had apparently remained calm after exposure to the draft UNRRA agreement. In the letters he asked the Secretary whether the draft would be submitted to Congress for approval and the congressmen whether they had agreed to the contrary. The latter replied -- as well they might -- that they had never agreed to bypass the Congress. This fed the hot flame Senator Vandenberg's indignation, which huffed and puffed around the Senate press gallery. There hounds scented a controversy, which is to journalism what a fox is to fox hunting. Soon the whole pack, kenneled too long by war-induced unanimity, was in full cry. ...
[The draft UNRRA agreement] aroused the anti-New Dealer in Vandenberg to rotund hyberbole. The draft, he wrote, "pledged our total resources to whatever illimitable scheme for relief and rehabilitation all around the world our New Deal crystal gazers [ i.e., the Truman administration] might desire to pursue. ...
I can only plead that it no more occurred to me that Congress would feel left out of organizing a relief organization than in not being included in a Washington Community Chest Drive. One learns in time that the right to be indignant at either inclusion or exclusion -- at either "putting Congress on the spot" or "bypassing" it --is a congressional prerogative, highly prized.
Except for the vastly superior quality of the writing on both sides (they used to teach composition in English classes in those days) times have not changed much. The Senate does a great deal of good for the country behind scenes, in legislation that is often too complicated for its quality to be appreciated. But when the cameras roll, the spectacle is incomparably entertaining. And that is the theme of the '08 election, we are in for a great campaign.
Meanwhile, I'll keep working on my General Taxonomy of Senatorial Species.
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