Lawmakers Plan Retreat From Rancor of Congress

Back in the 1950s, Republican Robert H. Michel and Democrat Dan Rostenkowski were the political equivalent of road buddies. The young congressmen routinely drove together from Washington back to their Illinois districts, taking turns napping on a mattress in the back of a station wagon for the daylong journey.

Even as they rose to prominence over the years--Michel became House Republican leader and Rostenkowski chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--the two pols were regular dinner and golf companions. They had the kind of easy friendship across party lines that for years was common in Congress.

Now it is the exception. Deep ideological splits in Congress have made bipartisan camaraderie as outdated as tail fins on a car. So profound are the divisions that more than 200 House members of both parties are going all the way to Hershey, Pa., this weekend for a retreat to practice being civil to each other.

“There are so many pressures keeping us from coming together,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento). “We have to go to Hershey just so people can walk up and introduce themselves.”

More is at stake than just the workaday atmosphere in the Capitol. Without more trust among lawmakers, many argue, there is no hope that Congress will take the politically risky steps needed to balance the federal budget, shore up Medicare and Social Security and address other pressing national problems.

“One party can’t handle it alone,” said Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.). “They will get killed by the other side.”

President Clinton and congressional leaders made a one-day stab at bipartisanship recently when they produced a short list of issues that both parties want to pursue. And Republicans have been trying mightily to restrain their criticism of the president’s budget and to cool their most heated rhetoric.

But it’s an uphill fight, many analysts say, because the decline of comity in Congress is a product of broad and lasting changes in American politics and society that will not be undone by a three-day retreat or a quickie meeting of leaders.

Romantic View of the Past

A big change in the kinds of people who come to Congress over the last generation--more ideological, single-issue activists and fewer get-along-to-go-along pragmatists--has helped make it a harsher, more uncompromising place. Many of the things that brought lawmakers together socially in the past--foreign travel, golf junkets--are now taboo. And some argue that Congress’ rancorous tone has its origins far beyond the walls of the Capitol.

“The reason things are so nasty in Congress is because the [voters] have been in a pretty foul mood for 30 years,” said Eric Uslaner, a political scientist at the University of Maryland. “Congress is really a wonderfully representative institution.”

Whatever the cause, Michel said in an interview, Congress was transformed during his 38-year career in the House, which ended in 1994. “Back in the old days, there was so much more camaraderie.”

To be sure, politicians’ nostalgia for the good old days may reflect a romantic view of the past. Congress may have been a more civil place a generation ago, but it was in part for reasons few lawmakers would want to replicate today: It was a more homogeneous institution, less open to public scrutiny and riddled with practices that are frowned upon today.

When Democratic Speaker Sam Rayburn ran the House in the 1950s with his fabled “Board of Education”--a small group of senior members who often did business over drinks behind closed doors--it was all very congenial. But junior members, women and minorities had no seats on the board.

Michel and Rostenkowski enjoyed the esprit of golf together, but often it was one special interest or another that picked up the bill.

Legislative Debates Become Brawls

However chummy Congress once was, today’s partisan incivility is not without precedent. Some 19th century confrontations--gun-waving brawls, vile insults and even a caning--make the current scene seem tame. But those tended to be episodic outbreaks of hostility; the bitter, partisan climate of recent years has seemed systemic.

According to Congressional Quarterly, which has analyzed congressional votes since 1954, partisanship reached its peak in 1995, when 73% of all roll-call votes in the House and 69% in the Senate broke down roughly along party lines. The partisanship index dropped in 1996 to 56% in the House and 62% in the Senate, but in the previous 40 years, even those levels had been surpassed only three times in the Senate and seven times in the House.

Not only has Congress become more partisan, but lawmakers seem less-and-less civil in the way they express their differences, especially since Republicans won control of Congress in 1994. The first act of the big, rambunctious class of House GOP freshmen was to throw out the tradition that has always provided House members with their first opportunity to meet socially across party lines. Instead of attending a bipartisan orientation session at Harvard University for new House members, Republican freshmen trooped off to an all-GOP affair hosted by a conservative think tank.

With alarming frequency, legislative debates have turned into brawls. Then-Rep. Sam M. Gibbons (D-Fla.) yanked on the tie of Rep. William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield) in one angry face-off over Medicare. Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) shoved Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego) after a testy debate on Bosnia.

Friendships across party lines now are not unheard of--especially in the smaller, more collegial Senate, where, for example, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has formed a close alliance with Democrat Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) in pushing campaign finance reform and other legislation. But increasingly such alliances are viewed as oddities, or like consorting with the enemy.

Nowhere has the collapse of comity been more glaring than in the upper reaches of the House leadership, where Minority Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan, the institution’s second-ranking Democrat, led the ethics attack against Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Relations grew so sour that lawmakers marveled when Bonior passed a glass of water to the speaker in a recent meeting--and Gingrich drank it.

In a sharp break from past practice, Gingrich and Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) almost never talk to each other. When Michel was GOP leader, he met at least once a week with Democratic leaders.

Some Democrats say that Gingrich, with his provocative rhetoric, is single-handedly responsible. But plenty of Democrats have latched onto his techniques. Gingrich may be just the most powerful and visible example of a new breed of politician that has been coming to Congress in recent years.

With the decline of political parties’ clout in the last few decades, more lawmakers are elected on the strength of their links to ideological or single-issue interest groups such as environmentalists and the Christian right. These lawmakers are more likely to be uncompromising than the pragmatic products of old-style political machines or the traditional House members who care more about their local constituency than national issues.

‘Gradual Erosion of Personal Relationships’

“The reason Bob Michel could put his arm around Dan Rostenkowski is that they were in the same business: trying to broker compromises,” said Catherine E. Rudder, executive director of the American Political Science Assn.

For people who are wedded to a particular cause, it is harder to build bridges to those who disagree. “When you look at the other side as the devil,” said the University of Maryland’s Uslaner, “the last thing you want to do is sit down with them and figure out how to split the difference.”

Lawmakers have fewer and fewer opportunities to get to know each other on a personal level. Lobbyist-financed golf and ski outings are against the rules. Official trips abroad are shunned by many members because, though still allowed, they are often viewed as boondoggles.

The House and Senate gyms have traditionally given members an opportunity to bond informally and without party label. But some younger members now shun the places as tainted perquisites of the institutions they ran against.

Some lawmakers also say that they have fewer long-term friendships because turnover is so much higher than it once was. Almost two-thirds of all House members have served six years or fewer.

“There’s been a gradual erosion of the kind of personal relationships that build trust,” said Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Colo.).

Into this breach has stepped a group of House members--including Skaggs--who have organized the Hershey retreat to restore some civility to lawmakers’ dealings. They are planning a mix of recreation and small-group discussions where members can get acquainted and chew over what bugs them.

It sounds a bit like a political encounter group, but taxpayers will not have to foot the bill. The Pew Charitable Trusts have given conference organizers $700,000 for the shindig. Participants will pay $60 per lawmaker, $30 per spouse and $10 per child.

Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) is among the many House members who are sitting it out. “He’s not going because the people who need to go won’t,” said an Oxley aide. “The people who are already civil will show up.”

Conference organizers remain optimistic. Said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who represents Michel’s old district: “There will be relationships developed and formed that weekend that will last way beyond the 105th Congress.”