know; and so on. The day is splintered into all kinds of pieces, even before the business of legislative work begins.
One thing that in my innocence I had not anticipated was the intensely political atmosphere that prevails within the Senate, the great impact of purely political considerations on specific actions taken by individual senators. It may well be, of course, that mine was an unusual introduction to the institution, as at least a half-dozen of my colleagues were beginning to jockey for position in the presidential race within months of when I was sworn in. This had an inevitable influence on how they orchestrated their performance in the Senate. Also there was the fact that both houses of Congress were controlled by one party and the White House by the other; and as the presidential primaries approached, the political atmosphere palpably intensified.
But these unusual considerations notwithstanding, I soon learned that many senators tend to cast their votes with a view towards minimizing future political controversy or embarrassment. When a senator’s vote is clearly not critical to the fate of a bill, it is often deployed for future political convenience on the ground that it “wouldn’t count anyway.” Thus the Senate vote will often be quite lopsided on questions on which public opinion and the real opinion within the Senate are much more evenly divided.
This protecting of political flanks may seem harmless enough, but it vitiates what I believe should be an important educational function of the Senate. If citizens see that members of that body have voted overwhelmingly in favor of this or that piece of legislation, many who are not entirely certain of their own grounds for opposing it may decide that they have in fact been wrong, or backward, or insensitive. Yet if on such issues each member of the Senate had voted his true convictions, the breakdown might have been, say, fifty-five to forty-five instead of seventy to thirty. I can’t help but wonder to what extent this form of political expediency may affect the public’s perception of the issues.
There may be another reason why the opinion of the Senate—even when accurately recorded—is very often at odds with what I, at least, take to be the current mood of the American people. Without having researched the point, I suspect that the Senate incorporates a cultural lag of ten or fifteen years; that it is out of phase with the people by a period approximately equivalent to the average tenure of its membership.
A decade or so ago, the Senate was considered by some to be a backward, conservative body whose Republican-Southern Democrat coalition lay athwart progress and the will of the people. Others viewed it as a necessary brake on the rasher impulses of the House of Representatives. Today the situation is quite the reverse. The liberals are clearly in the majority in the Senate, and they do not reflect the growing public skepticism about federal initiatives; and it is the House that tends to blow the whistle on the excessive spending approved by the Senate.
If I am right about this cultural lag, there is a reason for it. A member of the House of Representatives is up for election every two years and thus needs to keep abreast of the views of his constituency. Also, because each member of the House represents a relatively compact area, his constituency tends to be more homogeneous than a senator’s, and there is less of an impulse to cater to the fringe groups within it. A member of the Senate, on the other hand, represents an entire state, incorporating a multitude of conflicting claims and interests. For better or for worse (I suspect the latter) a senator tends to pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the loudest voices—editorial writers, television commentators, pressure groups. Furthermore, once in office, he is there for at least six years. Thus a senator may be less sensitive than a representative to basic shifts in the underlying mood of the electorate as a whole.
I make this comment by way of observation and not of criticism. The Founding Fathers intended, after all, that the Senate be a balance wheel that would moderate the impulses of the moment. This function it in fact performs, even though at any given time those who believe that the current impulses are the correct ones may tend to impatience. The Senate, however, is not an institution to which the impatient should gravitate. It has its own pace; and, under the present rules, it takes a little maturing on the vine of seniority to be in a position to have a large impact on the institution.
It would be inaccurate, however, and unfair to suggest that the newest members are without the power to do more than register their 1 percent of the Senate’s total vote. The ancient tradition that freshman senators were to be seen and not heard has disappeared. Somewhat to my surprise, on my initial rounds I was encouraged by senior members to speak out when I felt I had learned the ropes and had something to say—which was not, I hasten to say, an invitation to be brash.
In point of fact, I soon learned that there are a number of ways in which even Number 99 can make his imprint on the law. If he is willing to do the necessary homework on the bills before his committee, if he attends meetings, if he presents arguments for or against specific provisions, he does have a chance to mold their final form. I have found that my own views will be given as careful a hearing as those of any other member of the committees on which I have served; again, the essential courtesy of the Senate comes to the fore. It is also possible, by submitting appropriate amendments, to shape legislation after it has reached the floor.
It will also occasionally be the lot of a senator to come across an idea of such universal appeal that it will whisk through the legislative process in record time; witness two bills I introduced involving certain benefits for prisoners of war and those missing in action in Indochina. Each immediately attracted more than sixty co-sponsors, and each has since been signed into law.
Finally, there are the educational opportunities that the Senate opens up even to the newest of senators. These had not occurred to me when I first decided to run for office, but it did not take long for me to appreciate the skill with which some of the more liberal members were utilizing their office to reach the public. They would schedule time on the Senate floor, often in tandem, to deliver themselves of learned or impassioned speeches to an empty chamber. Their wisdom might be wasted on the Senate air, but they were able to alert the press that Senator So-and-So would deliver remarks on such-and-such a topic at a particular time. Copies of the speech would be distributed, and the gist of the senator’s argument and the points he wished to make would become part of the nation’s informational bloodstream. I also noticed that conservative-minded senators were generally less alert to the possibilities presented by this exercise.
Whether utilized or not, the opportunity does exist for a senator to present his views on the important issues with some reasonable assurance that they will not be totally lost. Only by exploiting such opportunities for public education can he expect to help the electorate become more adequately informed on the basic issues. This in turn bears on the legislative process, because, in the last analysis, public opinion dictates the outside limits of the options available to Congress. By joining in the public debate and articulating the arguments in support of his own positions, a new senator—even one labeled “Conservative-Republican” (my official designation, since I was elected on the Conservative Party ticket but was accepted by the Republican caucus)—can contribute to the educational process that ultimately finds its reflection in national policy.
These, then, are the random impressions of the United States Senate by one of its newest members: It is a deliberative body in which there is too little time to deliberate. It is a place where a member is entitled to free haircuts (although he is expected to tip the barber one dollar) in a barber shop that keeps a shaving mug with his name on it. It is a place where on each desk there is a little inkwell, a wooden pen with a steel nib, and a glass bottle filled with sand with which to blot one’s writing, and where on one side of the presiding officer’s desk is a spittoon and on the other a box of snuff.
Yet it is also a place where the rules of civility are still observed, and the rights and independence of each individual still respected. It is a place where many of the major decisions affecting the shape of our times are made; a place where even the least of its members may have a hand in making them.
It is, all in all, a good place to be.
The one fundamental change that has occurred in the Senate since my departure more than three decades ago is the disappearance of the pervasive civility that so impressed me when I arrived there. Otherwise, the treadmill merely runs faster. Staffs have grown, but not in pace with the