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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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BETRAYAL IN THE SENATE Betrayal is one of those “adult” concepts that children often learn very early in life. In his comic strip, “Peanuts”, Charles Schultz ran a classic series dealing with it. This was the famous vignette featuring Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. The scenario was constant, except for Lucy’s endless creativity in persuading Charlie Brown to try yet another kick at the football which she offered to hold. Charlie Brown – knowing that Lucy always snatched the football away just as he was about to kick it – took great pains to get her solemn assurances that this time she would not betray him. But inevitably, she could not resist the betrayal, causing Charlie Brown to somersault hilariously, head over heels, from the missed kick. In some strips Charlie Brown made wry remarks about Lucy’s character or his own gullibility after the latest betrayal. Other times he raged around the landscape, pounding the earth, shouting at the heavens and beseeching the cosmic powers over the injustice of the thing. Then he would calm down and line up for, perhaps, the 4,788 th try. Lucy would glance out from the frame with an innocent, yet knowing look which told the reader that this kick would end like all the others. We laughed at Charlie Brown’s predicament because the scenario was so absurd. Most of us would have endured no more than two or three tries at the football – or its equivalent – before giving it up as a terminal case of betrayal. Charlie Brown, it seemed, could not grow wise enough to see that Lucy would never change and that he needed to follow another line. As a boy, I learned about betrayal, but not from a comic strip. A neighbor was a boyhood friend, but as we grew older he sometimes turned on me with physical abuse when something did not go his way. My punishment for thwarting his wishes would be a sucker punch or a whack on the shins with a stick. After each incident, acting as though nothing had happened, he would want us to resume playing. Being the younger, I would agree and things would go on as before – for a time. Then the cycle would repeat, and I would again run home in tears. Finally, the day came when I grew up – not to adulthood, but enough so I wanted no more of that game. After a final crack across the shins I did not go back to his house. I was angry, and when he knocked at my door I refused to join him in play again. He was hurt by my rejection, but at the age of seven I could not articulate – as I can now – that his repeated betrayals were intolerable. Nor could I ask, as an adult might do, why he behaved so angrily. (Perhaps he saw this modeled at home.) Enough was enough. My “friend” had betrayed me once too often. Unlike Charlie Brown, my limit was far less than 4,788 times. Life is not a comic strip. Charlie Brown and my boyhood experiences come to mind because the United States Senate is also in the throes of betrayal. The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body was once a collegial band of senior statesmen who valued gentility, manners, propriety and bipartisan cooperation. The body retained a courtly air from an earlier day. (“I yield to the Esteemed Gentleman from Georgia…”, etc.) Senators basked serenely in harmony and mutual respect. Many enjoyed personal friendships with colleagues of the opposing party. Only rarely would political differences disturb the Senate’s time-honored comity. Verbal attacks, senator to senator, were very unusual. If they did occur they were considered extremely bad form. More than just an office, the Senate was an environment to be admired. My Civics teacher praised it as “republican democracy at its finest”. This pattern continued through most of two centuries – from the country’s formation down through years of civil war, depression, world war, militant communism and nuclear standoff. All through the major political realignment of the New Deal, on into the Fair Deal, the Great Society and the Shining City on a Hill, the Senate discharged its duties in a charming, time-honored style. All that has now changed. I doubt if very many civics teachers, today, are calling the Senate “republican democracy at its finest”, or anything similar. The Senate now rivals – and often exceeds – the House of Representatives in partisan rancor. Members attack each other, verbally, in the chamber and the media. Senators call the President a liar and savage his political nominees with language that the genteel old chamber has rarely heard. In the Senate’s latest act, during the four years of George W. Bush’s presidency, a determined Democratic minority has used the filibuster to block confirmation votes on a dozen or so of Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees. Frustrated Republicans – complaining that Democrats have “betrayed” the Senate’s long tradition of accommodation and bipartisan respect – threaten to change Senate rules to make the filibuster inapplicable to judicial nominees. In response, Democratic Senators say democracy is being “betrayed”. They vow to arrest all Senate business if Republicans change the rules. The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body now resembles a snappish church committee arguing over new draperies or the minister’s salary. Many commentators – including some Senators – decry the loss of harmony in that once august body. What has happened? Why can’t things be as they always were? they ask. Both parties feel betrayed. Why they do is worth examining. As I have mentioned in previous writings, people in and about government became accustomed to Democratic rule being the settled order of things, from 1933 to 1995. Although Republican presidents were sometimes elected, the Congress remained solidly Democratic for all but a few years of that span. Those few presidents could not change the fundamental sense that Democratic policy was the One True Way. Political and judicial appointees thus had to pass Democratic muster. In 1969, the Senate showed Richard Nixon who was boss by rejecting his first two Supreme Court nominees (Clement Haynesworth and Harold Carswell). Even Ronald Reagan could not get Robert Bork, the eminent conservative jurist, confirmed to the Court in 1987. Indeed, some of Mr. Reagan’s judicial appointees – e.g., Sandra Day O’Connor – have turned out to be extremely liberal. This was true for most Republican presidents during Democratic rule. The long Democratic hegemony produced a federal court system dominated by liberal judges. When the country leaned liberal, this was not a problem. But as the country has tended more conservative, that judiciary has frustrated the emerging conservative majority by keeping the liberal agenda in play. Some commentators call the federal bench “liberalism’s last gasp”. Court decisions over the past year show how out of touch the courts are with the temper of the country. Along with many commentators I believe those decisions contributed to Mr. Bush’s election. The unsettling move away from liberalism and toward conservatism was partially muted by Bill Clinton’s presidency. When the first Republican Congress in 40 years swept into office, in 1994, the pragmatic Mr. Clinton adjusted and actually claimed credit for many Republican initiatives. But he kept the stream of liberal judges flowing. His Supreme Court nominee, Ruth Bader Ginzberg, received Republican Senatorial approval despite her outspoken liberalism. In 1996 most senators still believed the president was entitled to have his court nominees approved. The Senate has not done this uniformly. In 1968 Republicans filibustered LBJ’s lame-duck appointment of Abe Fortas for Chief Justice. Democrats retaliated a year later by voting down Haynesworth and Carswell, but those episodes were exceptions. For two hundred years the Senate has approved most presidential nominees unless they were clearly unqualified. That the current Democratic minority in the Senate has abandoned this tradition is Republicans’ chief claim of betrayal. Offended Republicans cannot see why the latitude past Democratic presidents received should not be given to Mr. Bush. For their part, Democrats act as though Mr. Bush’s conservative nominations for the federal bench are a betrayal of political normalcy. They seem to think it is intolerable that those judges will not enact the liberal agenda from the federal bench, so they feel entitled to use any means to block them. They are outraged over Republicans’ threats to take away their primary tool, the filibuster. To them, this is betrayal heaped on betrayal. Where does all this leave us? And what can be done about the “betrayals”? Clearly, the real must be separated from the imaginary. Democrats are deluded about “political normalcy” meaning only liberal judges on the bench. Those claims are bogus. But as they are determined to prevail – even at the cost of betraying the Senate’s long traditions of comity and good order – Republicans must face and overcome that betrayal. This places two great tasks before the Republican majority. The first is educational. The GOP must teach the electorate how a republic works. This includes clarifying the majority’s right to conduct the government’s business as they see fit, and the president’s right to have his judicial nominees voted on. In earlier times these premises were never questioned, but it is a new day. The second task is to master the exercise of power. Republicans were in the minority for so long that no living Republican knows the mechanics of power. Current leaders – still new to the job – must adjust old customs and courtesies to the new reality of an uncooperative minority party. Political minorities deserve respect and civility, and a seat at the table, but they have no right to obstruct government simply because they no longer control it. Eventually, this will all come right, but it will be a bitter lesson for some. The new reality is disappointing to Republicans who remember the easy camaraderie they shared with Democrats when the latter were in charge. They feel cheated by not getting that same treatment, now that the bottom rail is on top. This is too bad, but it can’t be helped. Times change. Gracious winners are not always good losers. Yesterday’s betrayal becomes today’s wisdom.
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