Conservatives Attack Congress--and Thereby Their Own Tradition : Power: Republicans are tired of winning the presidency while losing House and Senate. So they move against the legislative branch, a dangerous tactic.

Delegates to the 17th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this month were urged to support a constitutional amendment by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) that would limit congressmen to six terms and senators to two terms. McCollum himself, now serving his fifth term, wouldn’t say whether he would seek a seventh--an irony that should not be allowed to obscure deeper issues.

A case can surely be made for ensuring greater competitiveness in political campaigns and removing some of the built-in advantages enjoyed by incumbents. That said, it is still distressing to see so-called conservatives--who pride themselves on devotion to the documents on which the republic was founded--seeking to rewrite the Constitution to achieve this goal.

It is more distressing to realize that the push to limit terms is part of a larger assault by right-of-center forces on the Congress itself, including support for a presidential line-item veto. A good chunk of the agenda at this year’s Washington CPAC, the most significant gathering of conservative leaders and grass-roots activists in the nation, was devoted to lambasting what they have taken to call “the imperial Congress.”

After a decade of Republican Presidents and largely Democratic Congresses, perhaps it is understandable for Reagan-Bush Republicans to show some impatience with the legislative branch and a greater identification with the executive. It would be a serious mistake, however, to let such impulses harden into dogma.

Conservatives need to remember that throughout most of our history, Congress was the predominant force in American government--and this was certainly the case during those periods of national development that conservatives view with the most affection. The great change took place with the New Deal and World War II--at precisely the time, in other words, when the expansion of federal power traditionally deplored by conservatives began to accelerate. Presidential power increased along with federal power; the role of Congress correspondingly shrunk.

This was a development that conservatives at the time, like Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), noted, denounced and struggled against. Today’s conservatives, oddly, seem to celebrate it and resist all efforts by Congress to reassert itself.

Angered by Democratic legislatures that have refused to bow to the will of Republican Presidents, conservatives--shortsightedly--have turned an attack on specific Congresses and congressmen into an attack on Congress itself.

One example: The dispute over aid to the Nicaraguan resistence--which led to the Iran-Contra affair--was the result of a President’s determination to take action, however strongly opposed by the House of Representatives. Conservatives lined up obediently behind executive power.

The goal, ultimately, is to by-pass Congress by forging a more plebiscitary relationship between the presidency and the voters.

And by dislodging incumbents, they hope to seat a Congress more immediately responsive to presidential direction. Yet they need look no further than one of their own genuine prophets, the late James Burnham, to see the danger of any such undertaking.

Twenty-five years ago, when Congress was more powerful than it is today, Burnham wondered whether it would survive at all as an “active political entity with some measure of real power, not merely as a rubber stamp, a name and a ritual, or an echo of real powers lodged elsewhere.” If it did not, Burnham warned, political liberty itself would perish.

The trend of our time, at least in this country, is toward greater centralization of power in the executive branch. This trend has continued under Presidents of both parties, all of whom have, consciously or otherwise, worked toward one common aim: to transform the “people,” an independent, self-governing community of adults, into the “masses,” whose unfiltered desires these Presidents can embody.

The Founders, who feared “despotism,” “tyranny” and “monarchy,” took pains to make sure it couldn’t happen here. They made the separation of powers central to the new republic and invested the vast majority of governmental power in the legislative branch.

Until fairly recently, any number of other institutions at state and local levels helped restrain the executive. These institutions have for the most part ceased to so restrain, leaving only Congress (and, at times, the courts) to filter the popular will and militate against expansion of presidential power.

Conservatives--who also pride themselves on taking the long view of things--need, finally, to bear in mind that there is no guarantee that future Presidents will be as conservative as those elected in recent years. Someday the liberal Democrats will return to power, and when they do the conservatives will surely rue the day they began to wage war on the “imperial Congress.”