Dick Meyer, who covered the Senate from 1987 to 1993 for CBS News and is now editorial director of CBSNews.com, lays out a series of explanations of the decline of the Senate in today’s Washington Post Outlook section.
All of his explanations make sense, although his discussion of the “missing moderates” was a bit one-sided:
When Lowell Weicker, once a Republican senator and governor from Connecticut, quit the GOP in 1990, he said the party’s moderate wing had become just a feather. Now it’s just a mangy tuft.
The Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party almost got the nomination in 1968 and expanded in the Senate of the 1970s and ’80s with names such as Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Charles Mathias, Arlen Specter, John Heinz, Bill Cohen, Warren Rudman, John Chafee, John Danforth, Richard Lugar, Nancy Kassebaum and Weicker. Only Lugar and Specter are left, joined occasionally by Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and sometimes Arizona maverick John McCain.
Last year, the Democrats lost two key figures who could work with Republicans — John Breaux of Louisiana and Zell Miller of Georgia. Other conservative Democrats, such as Howell Heflin, are long gone.
This discussion minimzes the significant fact, recently discussed here, that although the number (and in Meyer’s eyes, the stature) of Republican “moderates” may have declined, there are still quite a few Republicans of stature left in the Senate who can be counted on to vote with the Democrats with some frequency. Meyer names McCain, Lugar, Specter, Chafee, Snowe, Collins, but he does not name Hagel, Dominici, and probably one or two others I’m missing. In any event well over 10% and actually closer to 15% of the Republican senators are “moderate.” And what is the equivalent Democratic number? Meyer does not name one, although he could have listed Nelson from Nebraska. Yet it is the Republicans whose substantial number of moderates he describes as a “mangy tuft.”
Oh well. He does work for CBS, and was no doubt in sympathetic association with Dan Rather for many years.
In addition, there is one serious omission from his list of explanations of why the Senate is imploding over the “nuclear option”: the increasing tendency of heated social issues to be dealt with by the courts and not by Congress or the states. If judges legislate, legislators will evaluate judicial nominees by political standards.
This increase in judicial legislating has resulted as much from legislative and executive cowardice as it has from judicial imperialism, but whatever the cause the effect is very much with us. For example, virtually the entire edifice of racial preference that now permeates our policies has been built on judicial decisions, not legislative action. And even the few exceptions — decisions by unreviewed executive agencies — proves the rule of legislative passivity.
Indeed, the Democratic solution to the impasse over judges — preventing the Senate from voting at all — is a perfect example of how the Senate got itself into this mess in the first place.
UPDATE [24 May]
Dick Meyer responds that the above struck him as a fairly standard example of dismissing by shouting bias.
Maybe he took my tongue-in-cheek (but nevertheless a bit snide) comment about his being in sympathetic association with Dan Rather too literally.
In any event, far from dismissing him, I thought I was criticizing the false equivalence he drew of the decline of “moderates” in both parties, as well as his failure to note that the conflict over judges has been fueled by judges deciding more issues on which the executive and legislative brances have abdicated their responsibility.
The best way to measure moderates would be to compare the appropriate ratings maintained by the Conservatives and Liberals of the senators. If we define a moderate as one who runs from 30-70 spectrum in either poll we’d see a true moderate.
I doubt there are five Democrats who can claim a rating in this sectrum though there are at least five and possibly more Republicans. What would be scary is the number of Democrats whose ratings are in the 90-100 zone, the extreme zone. Most Democrats are here.
Yes. This is the first time I have ever read an explanation about our social problems that lays the problem squarely at the feet of the legislature, where it belongs. They write laws that are vague, unworkable, contradictory, and just plain silly, and then leave it to the bureaucracy and the courts to straighten it all out. Flexibility is important, but the laws that are written are not flexible – they are an abomination. And it is not just the social issues – the tax laws, and the environmental laws are a mess, beause of legislature “compromises” to get “something” to show the voters.
After weeks of confusion, I have finally figured it out. The core of the filibuster debate has not been about comity, it has been about comedy. Surely, I must be right, elsewise, why would so many have willingly, even eagerly, made total asses of themselves (e.g., Schumer, Durbin, Kennedy, McCain, DeWine, Graham, et al) but to get a few laughs. I am serene once more.