Look for Candidates who Respect the Legislature

When we first began our campaign to improve public understanding of legislatures (the Trust for Representative Democracy), we discovered that what we were saying about state legislatures was almost word for word what former Congressman Lee Hamilton was saying at the Center on Congress at Indiana University.  All you had to do was to substitute our "state legislature" for his "Congress," and you had identical messages.  That was the basis on which we started a valuable partnership with the Center on Congress and, subsequently, together with the Center for Civic Education, formed the Alliance for Representative Democracy.

Just to prove the case that the messages are the same, I have taken one of Lee Hamilton's recent Comments on Congress (with apologies, thanks and admiration) and amended it to read as if it were written by a current or former state legislator.  Want to see if the argument works for your own state?  Just insert your state's name wherever you see the word "state."  You can find the original version of Hamilton's commentary without the deletions and additions here.

Look for Candidates who Respect the Congress State Legislature

by Lee Hamilton (as amended by Karl Kurtz)

You might not have noticed, given the media’s fascination with the presidential campaign, but there are 435 U.S. House contests and 35 U.S. Senate 5,579 state legislative races [a nationwide total--see a state-by-state list of 2008 legislative seats up for election] taking place this year. These are important elections, for even more reasons than you might be hearing about. Indeed, unless I miss my guess, the candidates and press in those many contests are barely talking about one of the most important issues we face: the role of Congress the state legislature itself.

The litany of matters worrying Americans and absorbing the attention of congressional state legislative candidates is, of course, long and complex: the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenges posed by Iran, the state of American public education, climate change, a long-term energy policy, immigration…. Not surprisingly, many voters want to hear how Congress the state legislature can protect them from financial ruin or how candidates propose to keep America our state strong. They’re less interested in how Congress the legislature functions.

Yet unless Congress the state legislature learns how to reassert its constitutional responsibility to be the President’s governor's equal in policy-making, the progress voters yearn to see on all those issues will be much harder to come by. This is why, as you listen to the various House and Senate candidates campaigning for your vote, I hope you’ll pay attention not only to what they say about the economy or Iraq education, but also to how they talk about Congress the state legislature itself.

It’s been the habit both of incumbents and their challengers in recent years to run for Congress the state legislature by running against the Congress the legislature. They criticize its profligate spending or its do-nothing ways or its shoddy ethics or the undue influence of money and lobbyists. These are all choice targets, and they have their place in the campaign debate, but you have to wonder how long this denigration of Congress the legislature can continue before Americans lose their faith in representative democracy.

There’s another path, and that’s to recognize that Congress the state legislature is flawed but that, as an institution, it needs upholding and shoring up, not stigmatizing. A robust, functional, and assertive Congress legislature is crucial to making our system work.

It needs to be able to keep an eye on the executive branch, advance an agenda based on its members’ understanding of what the country state needs, police its members’ behavior, be the place where the cross-currents roiling the American community meet in constructive debate, and in general play the muscular role our Founders envisioned for it in policy-making.

It cannot do any of these things if it is filled with politicians who are adept at making themselves look good and the Congress legislature look bad, or who care little about its institutional powers.

I’ve noticed something interesting as I have moved around the country states in recent months: a lot of people seem to have caught on to this. They express disappointment that Congress the state legislature for decades has allowed the White House governor to dominate it. They fret that the expansion of presidential executive power sought by the Bush administration governor has gone too far, and are bewildered by Congress’ the legislature's timidity in pushing its own powers. This is an extremely promising development — if it translates into an electorate willing to look carefully at how congressional state legislative candidates propose to set Congress the legislature back on track, and it begins to wake up Congress the general assembly as a whole.

For make no mistake, this is not just a matter of political theory or a topic for a good speech on the importance of constitutional checks and balances. It has to be practiced in the day-to-day workings of Capitol Hill.

If you ask candidates whether they are in favor of reasserting congressional legislative authority, the answer will almost certainly be yes. But that’s not enough. What you want to know is whether they’ll be aggressive in shaping the federal state budget; whether they believe Congress the legislature has a strong voice, along with the President’s governor's, in declaring war or pursuing military intervention overseas strengthening our educational system or improving our health care program; whether they’ll work with their colleagues to develop and fight for Congress’s the state legislature's own agenda, and not simply respond to the President’s governor's; whether they see that getting Congress’s the legislature's ethical house in order is crucial to building its institutional strength, not just a matter of political expediency; whether they understand that Congress the state legislature must be a truly deliberative and consensus-building body, not a place where the majority ramrods its wishes through without debate; and whether they understand that violating longstanding and fair procedure — by passing sprawling, multi-topic omnibus bills, for instance — merely hands the President governor more power.

If they get all this, even if you disagree on a few policy issues, I hope you’ll consider voting for them. If they’re oblivious and seem unconcerned about Congress’ the legislature's loss of power, then it’s worth asking whether they really understand our constitutional system of separate and co-equal branches of government and the need to revive Congress’s our state legislature's vigor and dynamism.