Chaotic Individualism of Congress Is No Place for Laying Down Party Line

To hear some Democrats describe it, last week’s vote on capital gains in the House was a kind of political Armageddon, with dabs of Thermopylae, Dunkirk and Gettysburg thrown in. It was seen as a weighing of souls and a time to sort out the true Democrats from the crypto-Republicans, Quislings and neo-Boll Weevils. Democratic National Chairman Ronald H. Brown referred portentously to the capital gains issue as “one we ought to have a line drawn in the sand about.”

But for all of this apocalyptic rhetoric, there is an eternal and underlying truth that the Democratic soothsayers missed: Congress is no place to argue over the fate of a political party or to winnow out renegades from true believers. Now, having painted the issue of capital gains in such dramatic colors, Democratic leaders have unnecessarily weakened their position by giving President Bush a more conspicuous victory than necessary.

Congress, that citadel of rampant individualism and the every-man-for-himself ethic, is just no place to hold referendums on party philosophy. You can debate them in closed party caucuses, but resorting to party-line votes to test partisan fidelity can blow up in leaders’ faces. Recent victims have been Democratic leaders.

It is worth recalling the darkest days for Democrats, back in the spring of 1981, when Ronald Reagan, brandishing an electoral mandate, pressed Congress for massive budget and tax cuts. The prospects for such fiscal restructuring seemed problematic because the Democrats still controlled the House, even if by a diminished margin. Reagan was in good shape in the GOP-controlled Senate, but House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. was mustering his beleaguered troops for an epic struggle over issues that many saw as litmus tests of party loyalty.

But the leadership for Reagan’s major initiatives came from O’Neill’s own ranks. The huge budget cut was authored by Texas Democrat Phil Gramm. The massive tax cuts in the House were co-sponsored by another Texas Democrat, Kent Hance. And a group of Sunbelt Democrats, known as the Boll Weevils, was the deciding factor in Reagan’s victory on both issues in the House.

The Boll Weevils defected to the Republicans for a variety of reasons. Some, like Gramm, were basically hostile to the liberal economic policies of the Carter Administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress. Most were simply responding to those voices that always have the greatest resonance for members of Congress, their constituents.

So it was last week in the House, when 64 Democrats jumped ship to vote for a cut in the capital gains tax rate. Led by Democrat Ed Jenkins of Georgia, who engineered a revolt on the Ways and Means Committee against Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, many Democrats--and not all of them from the South and West--hearkened more to the messages coming from the voters and interest groups in their congressional districts than to the partisan urgings of Speaker Thomas S. Foley and Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt.

The bill was cleverly crafted by the White House to peel off many Democrats by providing special side payments to their constituents. Democrats from timber-producing states were the first to succumb to the special preference given to the sale of lumber and pulp from their wood lots. Others from areas with high-tech companies were pulled from the Democratic herd with arguments that the tax cut would have salutary effects on venture capital.

By the end of the struggle, even Democrats who had been favored by their leadership with prestigious assignments had joined the defectors. One vignette that underscored the rift among top Democrats was Gephardt’s trip to the Harriman Media Center on Capitol Hill to make a videotape denouncing the capital gains cut. The center is run by Beryl Anthony of Arkansas, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a tax-cut supporter.

There will be cries among those Democrats who supported the leadership on capital-gains reduction for the scalps of those who voted with the Republicans, but little will come of it. There were similar calls in 1981, and the only Democrat to suffer punishment was Gramm, who was stripped of his seat on the powerful Budget Committee. Gramm promptly resigned, went back to Texas, ran as a Republican for his old seat and won. He now sits as a Republican senator from Texas.

If Congress, with its parochial pulls on members, is not the place for the great debates and showdowns over the soul of a party, where should such a grand catharsis occur? The most appropriate forum is the Democratic presidential primary and the general election that follows. Only presidential candidates can frame issues with sufficient breadth to avoid the special pleading and particularistic bargaining that takes place in Congress. New party leaders such as Foley and Gephardt lacked the visibility to take on the President, and they erred in making their fight on a turf dominated by parochial loyalties and special interests.