Impeachment Strains a Delicate Alliance

Our nation’s capital is a wondrous place of timeless ritual and immutable rhythms. The cherry blossoms unfurl each spring. The national Christmas tree beckons each winter. The president gets impeached every 130 years.

And every few months, California’s congressional delegation gets another bust in the chops from some critic positing the perpetual plaint: Can’t they all just get along? In fact, the image of the state’s biggest-in-the-nation delegation as a pitiful brawling giant is one of the more durable--if dated--notions harbored by folks back home (to the extent they think about such matters at all).

Granted, the national earthquake research center will forever stand in Buffalo, N.Y., as a monument to the delegation’s ineptitude. But embarrassments like that and the lash of the early 1990s recession had a way of focusing minds, if not hearts.

For the past several years the 52-member House delegation has pulled together on various issues of state import, with some noteworthy achievements. In the session just ended, the delegation, in harness, helped boost California’s share of immigration funding, beat back another round of military base closings and prevailed in a trade dispute with Florida, among other accomplishments.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Dave LesStrang, an aide to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). Both have been instrumental in fostering greater delegation cooperation, “and we’ve done so in bipartisan fashion.”

That said, the debate over impeachment--ending in a near party-line vote--was the most partisan, personally wrenching and politically brutal many longtime members of Congress ever experienced.

Many may wish to forget, but can they forgive?

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Jerry Lewis and Bob Matsui (D-Sacramento) are two of the more thoughtful, respected members of the California delegation. Both are dutiful party soldiers. Yet each maintains good working relations across the partisan divide. Between them, they have spent more than 40 years in the House.

The two differed on impeachment. Lewis voted with the overwhelming majority of Republicans in favor. Matsui joined virtually all of his fellow Democrats opposed. But they agree the toxic atmosphere hanging over the Capitol doesn’t necessarily have to poison relations within the California delegation.

Matsui drew a sharp distinction between national issues and those of unique interest to California.

“There’s no doubt [impeachment] left a bad taste,” he said. “On any national issue, I think it’s going to be difficult to bridge the partisan gap.”

But, Matsui continued, “on specific local and regional issues we should do OK, in terms of the wine industry, the motion picture industry, intellectual property, agriculture, those types of issues. . . . The groups from California pretty much demand it out [of] us and we’ll do it for that reason.”

As that comment suggests, the delegation has succeeded--when it has--by focusing on niche issues in small, relatively noncontroversial areas, where parochialism overrides partisanship.

“Our mission is really very simple,” said LesStrang. “Focus on the possible.” In other words, the delegation will never reach consensus on issues like abortion, health care or patching Social Security, so why fight those futile fights?

Still, with feelings rubbed raw, Matsui won’t minimize the difficulty of coming together even on the most innocuous matters. “I think the next 24 months . . . will be very difficult,” he said. “It was a horrible vote we had to take; Democrats and Republicans feel that way. It’s going to be real difficult to bridge that.”

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Lewis agrees that cooperation won’t come easily. He well knows how passion can trump pragmatism. After all, years ago when Lewis was climbing the leadership ladder, a handful of fellow Republicans--Californians--put ideology ahead of state interests and undercut his efforts.

Still, like Matsui, Lewis reckons that California members will have little choice but to pull together. “As we get back into this Congress, I can tell you any number of problems are going to arise right away, seeking and requiring our attention,” Lewis said.

One key test: reauthorization of federal education programs, one of those obscure but important formula fights with billions of dollars in funding at stake for California.

Lewis, who has probably worked harder than anyone else--at greater cost--to unify the unwieldy California delegation, almost seems to take the matter personally.

“For the last hundred years at least, California has been a laughingstock in Congress,” Lewis said. “People from places like New York and Texas were quietly smiling, if not smirking, at us. I’m very sensitive to the fact that, for the first time in all my years in public affairs, we’ve had success coming together.

“And I think members will understand--and do understand--the importance of not allowing that to pass.”