Senate Progressive Contemplating Rational Committee Assignment Decisions
By divine right.
It used to be that the way you decided who had political authority in a country was that you looked at who had political authority last year. If he was still alive, then he kept his authority. If he died, his oldest living son got political authority. Then he kept it until he died. At which point it passed to his oldest living son. This system persisted for a long time and it has enough of a grip on the human imagination that you still see it formalized in Saudi Arabia and informally in effect in places like Syria and North Korea. It doesn’t, however, make any real sense. It’s not a rational or fair or just way to allocate political power.
Meanwhile, in the United States Senate the way they determine who gets to chair the Senate Finance Committee is they ask who chaired it last year. If he’s still around, he stays in charge. And if he dies or retires or loses an election, then the power automatically falls to the next guy in line. The guy can be corrupt or incompetent, and he still gets it. His views might be out of line with the sentiments of the party in charge or the American people, and he still gets it. He might represent a state containing no metropolitan areas, no racial minorities, and barely any rural white people and he still gets it. Vast authority with almost no accountability.
That’s why I was glad to read this:
In an apparent warning to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), some liberal Democrats have suggested a secret-ballot vote every two years on whether or not to strip committee chairmen of their gavels. [...] Harkin did not mention Baucus, but his suggestion would likely resonate with the senior Montana Democrat, who has often clashed with his colleagues over important bills.
The merits of this proposal really have nothing to do with the details of Baucus or the health care battle. They are also obvious and overwhelming. We wouldn’t pick committee chairmen by alphabetical order, or based on their ethnicity, or their age, or a system of primogeniture. We don’t generally believe in a system of political authority by divine right. Instead, political authority normally derives either from election by the people or else appointment by other elected officials. Congressional committee chairmanships, especially in the Senate, are a strange and anachronistic exception to that rule and changing the rule is an excellent idea.
37 Responses to “Senate Progressive Contemplating Rational Committee Assignment Decisions”
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July 30th, 2009 at 10:48 am
and barely any rural white people
You meant to say “non-rural,” right?
July 30th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Of course, one of the reasons this exists is so that those who have been elected can be helped to stay elected. Since incumbency is such a powerful effect, you don’t want to start politically hurting your party members, flipping the seat, and then losing it for a long time. I assume that’s one reason it evolved.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:57 am
This is the best writing I’ve seen from MattY in quite a while.
I would generally favor seniority in most cases, but the senate doesn’t use it for leader or whip and I agree that when someone is clearly out of step, he should be an exception. Out with Baucus!
July 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Another bold new idea for the Democrats.
Republicans brought in term limit rules for Senate and House committee chairs in the 90s as part of the Contract with America. Pelosi forced a rule change in the House this year to do away with term limits. The Senate dropped them when control passed back and forth between parties 6 or 7 years ago.
Republic caucus rules in the Senate currently call for term limits on minority chair assignments
July 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am
and barely any rural white people
You meant to say “non-rural,” right?
Well, in the case of Montana, there are barely any people of any description.
I doubt that chairmanships help get incumbents reelected. How many people can name even one committee that even one of their senators sits on? I can’t.
And anyway, kid destroyers explanation makes no sense. Why is it more important to protect senior incumbents rather than junior incumbents or incumbents who best reflect the political views of the entire caucus?
July 30th, 2009 at 11:04 am
It doesn’t, however, make any real sense. It’s not a rational or fair or just way to allocate political power.
This is wrong wrong wrong, as wrong as it’s possible for a political commentator to be. Monarchy and similar modes of succession reflect the rational nature of political institutions: their interest in seeing their own power preserved and extended.
Henry VIII didn’t have six wives because he liked having sex. He had mistresses for that. He had six wives because, after his first wife of 25 years had gone through menopause, leaving only a daughter, he realized his succession was in doubt, which meant that his underlings and domestic opponents would gradually cease being loyal to him and start positioning themselves for the uncertain political future, which would only hasten his own and his dynasty’s downfall.
Dynasties and familial succession are the standard way that ruling regimes secure their own power. That’s why you see them replicated no matter what the court ideology of the regime: Ancient Rome, ostensibly republican Italian Renaissance city-states, communist North Korea, or the contemporary American Republican party. It certainly isn’t fair or just. But it most definitely is rational.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Why doesn’t Max Baucus just go ahead and wear the logos of the healthcare companies on his suit, NASCAR-style?
July 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am
He might represent a state containing no metropolitan areas, no racial minorities, and barely any rural white people and he still gets it. Vast authority with almost no accountability.
Note to liberals. If you don’t want to be tagged as elitist, and you don’t want people to say you just don’t give a crap about the flyover states (the “Real America” arguement, as silly as the nomenclature is, is basically about this) then I would avoid implying that Senetor’s from Montana are not real Senetors and don’t really deserve the same rights and responsibilties.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:11 am
In theory, the committee chairmanships shouldn’t matter much. How many procedural roadblocks does a system need? The chairman of lots of other things doesn’t get to decide by fiat what those bodies do; he just leads meetings, keeps order, etc., and might have a tie-breaking vote or something. The chairman of a town’s selectboard couldn’t do any more to prevent something from being voted on than any other selectboard member.
It’s hard to decouple this from the political issues of the day, and we don’t want to get rid of all institutional hurdles there are because it makes sense to have some, but take your pick of, say, the two major roadblocks that would be easiest to get rid of and focus on them.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I would avoid implying that Senetor’s from Montana are not real Senetors and don’t really deserve the same rights and responsibilties.
I am certainly sensitive to the needs of Montana and its residents. That being said, the fact that someone who represents less than a million people is playing one of the leading roles in the health care debate by sole virtue of having been in the Senate for over 30 years seems to me rather absurd.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Yeah, because the person who’s been on the committee the longest and spent the most time dealing with all the details of that particular policy area COULDN’T POSSIBLY have a better handle on it than someone else.
I swear, it’s like the defining aspect of MattY’s blogging is total ignorance of the most obvious objections to his perspective.
Mike
July 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
MBunge: MattY’s not saying that the caucus would ignore seniority (although they might), but instead that seniority is not the only qualification for being a committee chair.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:21 am
you still see it formalized in Saudi Arabia and informally in effect in places like Syria and North Korea and the United States.
There, fixed.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:22 am
It used to be that the way you decided who had political authority in a country was that you looked at who had political authority last year. If he was still alive, then he kept his authority. If he died, his oldest living son got political authority. Then he kept it until he died.
Furthermore, this comment makes it sound like monarchs are unchallenged in their political systems, simply doing as they like so long as they remain alive. In reality, monarchies, as all forms of government, are dynamic games in which interests vie for power.
Medieval English kings liked to go to war, but they didn’t have enough money of their own to pay for armies and navies, so they confiscated the wealth of the kingdom’s wealthiest households. Then those households got together and made John I sign the Magna Carta, which meant that if he wanted their money, he had to ask them first. Then John’s son, Henry III, tried to ignore that and proceed as usual, and the nobles rebelled against his rule and succeeded in overthrowing him for awhile. Then he was able to fracture their coalition, return to power, and execute their leaders.
Over time, offices developed, among them the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Privy Seal. The Lord Chancellor got the Great Seal, which meant that anything the king wanted to do in his capacity as head of state had to be signed by the Lord Chancellor, who was to one degree or another a creature of parliament. But wait! The king also had substantial landholdings and other wealth in his private capacity, which gave him de facto power to derive revenues through other unaccountable means. But over time, parliament was able to counter-act that sort of thing as well by gaining control over the Privy Seal, thus making the king responsible to them in his private capacity as well.
My point in all of this is that the US government in 2009 is not some completely different animal than medieval English monarchy. Laws, precedents, institutions, and power are the variables that are always in contention in politics. There wasn’t some time in which the world moved from a one-man political order to a pluralist one, except for Congressional committee chairmen.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:24 am
JD: There’s a real justification for being polite, (especially because Montana is moving into swing state territory) but the argument doesn’t exclusively apply to flyover country; Vermont and Delaware have even less people than Montana, and Hawaii and Rhode Island have just slightly more. (Vermont is thoroughly rural, but it’s still in the domain of the “east coast ivory tower elitists.”) “Heartland” states probably ultimately get the sweeter deal out of how the Senate is set up, but the coasts have some rather small states in its own right.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:25 am
What if we replaced seniority by length of service, with seniority by size of state represented. Senators representing the largest states would always control the committees. Certainly it makes more rational sense to give added weight to Senators from larger states than to Senators with longer service.
That would make Schumer Chair of Senate Finance.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Note to liberals. If you don’t want to be tagged as elitist, and you don’t want people to say you just don’t give a crap about the flyover states (the “Real America” arguement, as silly as the nomenclature is, is basically about this) then I would avoid implying that Senetor’s from Montana are not real Senetors and don’t really deserve the same rights and responsibilties.
This obviously has nothing to do with anti-ruralism or whatever, it’s the problem with the Senate and Senators that Yglesias brings up roughly twice a day. Residents of rural areas have far more representation in government than residents of urban areas, and in the here and now there’s no good reason for that and it does a fair amount of harm. The only reason to like the status quo in the Senate* is if you “don’t give a crap” about people from predominantly urban states.
If you disagree with that, fine**, but don’t bring up culture war stuff and then accuse liberals of bringing it up.
* Since abolishing the Senate completely would require a Constitutional convention, which is not going to happen any time soon, there’s obviously a big middle ground between “like the status quo” and “want to change the status quo.” There’s plenty of room for debate about what, if anything, to do about the Senate, but reasonable debate starts with the premise that it’s grossly unrepresentative for reasons that have nothing to do with modern America, which is bad.
** Admittedly, the “fair amount of harm” part depends almost entirely on your policy preferences. But overall, this gets discussed all the time here, and I’ve never seen a convincing argument on the merits for why the Senate is actually good.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:26 am
It has to be emphasized the premium we pay for health care is coming out of money that could be spent somewhere else. The two premiums we pay — for health care and the military — mean that Americans quality of life will continue to slip behind that of other developed countries. If Americans traveled more they’d see: the rest of the developed world is simply nicer and more livable than it is here. Sweden’s nicer. Denmark’s nicer. France. Germany. Norway. Soon, we’ll be on a par (sorry to say this) with grunty England. And we’ll continue to fall.
And we don’t even get our money’s worth out of the premium. It’s just money channeled to rich people.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I believe the comment is unfair to Saudi Arabia, since I understand that the exiting monarch there tends to pick a successor on the basis of his estimate of the most capable of his large group of children from his large group of wives.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I believe the comment is unfair to Saudi Arabia, since I understand that the exiting monarch there tends to pick a successor on the basis of his estimate of the most capable of his large group of children from his large group of wives.
That’s not quite right, though the sentiment is. To date, all the Saudi monarchs since 1953 have been the children of King Abdul Aziz al Saud, the founding King. So each is basically choosing his most capable brother or half-brother of those remaining alive. The current crown prince is the half brother of the king and brother of the prior king.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am
That sounds good in theory, but in practice, the consequence was merely to concentrate power in the leadership – a leadership that has no term limits.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:46 am
As soon as I read this post I started listening to “It’s Only Divine Right” by The New Pornographers.
Unfortunately this is the only YouTube video of said song. The other is a Michael McDonald impersonator covering the song. I’m not kidding
July 30th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Woops, messed up the link there
Check it out
July 30th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Actually monarchy has many important advantages over democracy/republicanism. When you have a good monarch, decisions can be made at lightning speed and no ability is given to special interests (or an uncertain public) to slow down the process. Democracies are so unstable that they almost never work, while republics can sometimes be stable (not so much in, say, Iraq) although when they are they can be terribly indecisive. Checks and balances have some pretty strong pluses and minuses. The royal lottery surrounding a dynastic birth can also captivate a society like nothing else. Actually until the early 1700s, while republicanism was well understood, monarchy was almost universally viewed as being a better system despite its obvious disadvantages. I think we suffer from a great deal of hubris in believing we have it all figured out and are just smarter than our ancestors.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Republicans brought in term limit rules for Senate and House committee chairs
Which is basically how Sen. Jeff Sessions became ranking republican on the Judiciary Comm.; a nice twist for the Sotomayor hearings.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Marshall,
Your analysis of the power dynamics within Monarchies is (while obviously glossing over some important distinctions in the interest of brevity)fairly good, historically speaking. However, I think you’re missing a political-scientific distinction that’s absolutely crucial here. Fundamentally, the difference between a monarchy and a representative government lies not only in how the leaders of a society are selected, but rather in where ultimate sovereignty is deemed to lie.
In a monarchy (even in such attenuated, constitutional forms as exist in England, or Sweden, for example) ultimate sovereignty is vested in the Monarch, and all laws are based on this (in English property law, for instance, there is no such thing as inalienable private property: all land is held, in last resort, “of the Queen”). In a representative form of government, however, ultimate sovereignty is seen to be vested in the citizens as a whole, as is evinced in our self-designation that we are “a sovereign people.”
This fundamental distinction has very important implications for this discussion, but none more-so than the simple fact that, while you correctly assert that the “goal” of a successful monarchy is to perpetuate its authority, in a representative government serving a “sovereign people,” the ultimate aim should be advancing the interests of those represented, not of those doing the representing.
Now, we do not live in an ideal world, and, unfortunately, I tend to agree with the sentiment that “those most inclined to seek power are those least suited to wield it.” The extent to which we stray from the representative ideal is the extent to which we have given in to our fears and the spirit of decadence. Such real-world failings, however, should not be used, as you seem to be doing, to make the claim that representative democracy is not fundamentally different from strong-man rule. That way lies tyranny.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
“MBunge: MattY’s not saying that the caucus would ignore seniority (although they might), but instead that seniority is not the only qualification for being a committee chair.”
Yes, but he’s putting it in terms of an attack on seniority as an organizing principle in general.
Mike
July 30th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
A number of people made some rather good points about monarchial governments above, but I think MY’s basic point that they were not a fair or just way to allocate power stands, and that the rational behind them is no longer applicable in a democracy. I just wanted to add that only looking at the history of England can be a bit misleading, with the exception of the Tudors and Stuarts, no other medieval nation was ever so bound to the concept of the Rule of Law. The greatest of the Plantagents were law makers as well as warriors.
The other thing I want to address is the comments about the legitimacy of Sen. Baucus’s constituency. Montana has a population roughly equivalent to that of Bergen County, NJ. While I fully appreciate every one of Montana’s great inhabitants right to full and good representation, and there importance to this great country, it burns me a little that they have 8 times the voice I do in senatorial politics.
I think that’s what MY was trying to address. And I agree whole heartedly that we, wether as progressives, liberals or simple Easterners, need to find a way of expressing that while every citizen is valuable, some states simply have more citizens than others. And if we want to treat all citizens as equal, that has to be accounted for.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
a nice twist for the Sotomayor hearings.
Play Nicely, now.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
a nice twist for the Sotomayor hearings.
A small bit of irony, Jefferson? Nothing personal.
July 30th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Of course, other good questions are why the chair of a committee has so much more power than the other members or why a committee should be able to log jam things when the rest of the chamber wants action.
But the question at hand is how to instill the fear of the lord into one Max Baucus – and this move to threaten his chairmanship is but one tactic.
I, for one, refuse to believe that one could be senator for 30 years without a few skeletons in one’s closet. Inquiring minds want to know!
July 30th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
That’s only partly correct for the UK (were the ultimate sovereignty is vested in the “Queen in Parliament”, and “Sovereignty of Parliament” is the central term of constitutional theory), and simply wrong for Sweden, where Art. 1 of the Constitution of 1974 states:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
joe from Lowell Says:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Republicans brought in term limit rules for Senate and House committee chairs in the 90s as part of the Contract with America. Pelosi forced a rule change in the House this year to do away with term limits. The Senate dropped them when control passed back and forth between parties 6 or 7 years ago.
That sounds good in theory, but in practice, the consequence was merely to concentrate power in the leadership – a leadership that has no term limits.
============================================================
True the leadership has no term limits, but it is at least subject to re-election within the caucus at the beginning of each Congress, unlike seniority-only chairmanships.
I can’t help but smile at Yglesias’ bright new idea of aligning himself with one of Newt Gringrich’s bright new ideas from 1994.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The chairmen of senate committees are decided by their respective caucuses- that is they enact the rules by which they are chosen- which has been seniority. Each party always has the option of changing this system (I believe Republicans decided to limit their chairmen to six years). It is interesting that this issue has been brought up so much recently about Baucus – most likely since he hasn’t gone hook, line, and sinker for the preferred liberal fix to healthcare. Why haven;t we seen articles and reader comments like this when Pat Leahy (who also represents a small racially homogenous state) was running the Judiciary Committee during Supreme Court nomination hearings?
July 30th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
JD –
The more salient point here is that, while Max Baucus may very well represent the interests of his state (which is up for debate), he isn’t very representative of the Democratic caucus. One of the things we’ve learned in the last 10 years is that having leaders from marginal seats is not as effective as having leaders from safe seats in pursuing the agenda of the caucus. Nancy Pelosi has been a much more effective leader of the Democrats in the House in part because her seat is absolutely safe – she won’t be Tom Foleyed. The only problem is that we haven’t yet done the same thing in the Senate – Harry Reid’s seat is not as safe and Reid himself is not as representative of the caucus as say, Dick Durbin. The Republicans learned this lesson early on and learned it well – see Bill Frist (R-TN), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Don Nickles (R-OK), Tom DeLay (R-TX), and Trent Lott (R-MS).
July 30th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
she won’t be Tom Foleyed
And hopefully Pelosi won’t be Mark Foleyed, either.
July 31st, 2009 at 11:05 am
If Americans traveled more they’d see: the rest of the developed world is simply nicer and more livable than it is here.
Except for the upper-class elite, Americans can’t afford to travel much, between our stagnant wages and our skyrocketing health-care costs borne by the individual (and now high energy prices too). We only get to see Europe on the Internet.
We also get very little vacation time, which doesn’t help.