TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/010692/01069911.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 5KB | 102 lines

                                                                                MAN OF THE YEAR, Page 48

BUMS OF THE YEAR

Congress.


By Stanley W. Cloud


    Like fish in a barrel, Congress has always been too good
a target to miss. From the very beginning, the tendency of the
nation's lawmakers to posture or steal or make damn fools of
themselves has been an inspiration to reformers and parodists
alike. In 1794 Thomas Jefferson, who was easily shocked by the
depths to which other politicians could sink, denounced the
"shameless corruption" he had witnessed in the First and Second
Congresses. A century later, Mark Twain, who was not so easily
shocked, insisted there was no such thing as a "distinctively
native American criminal class, except Congress." In 1906 Henry
Adams, whose own father and grandfather had served in the House
of Representatives, somewhat disapprovingly quoted a Cabinet
member as follows: "You can't use tact with a Congressman! A
Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the
snout!"

    In the past, such attitudes have reflected little more
than a healthy American desire to show politicians who,
finally, is boss. But after a couple of centuries of scandal,
public opinion now seems to have taken a more sinister turn.
Thanks in no small part to the remarkable log-rolling exhibition
that the 102nd Congress staged during 1991, many Americans have
gone from merely harboring negative thoughts to a profound
sense of contempt for the legislative body. The dangers are
manifest. Voters are staying home in droves at election time,
which only enhances the formidable benefits of incumbency, and
they are increasingly likely to embrace quick-fix "reforms,"
like term limitations, whose eventual effects can only be
guessed at. It is one thing for citizens to indulge themselves
in democratic uppityness; it's quite another to sink into sullen
discouragement.

    And yet why not? What's to be said in defense of an
institution that prates endlessly about equal opportunity, fair
employment and freedom of information, then excludes itself from
most of the laws that would help achieve those goals? How can
there be anything but contempt for politicians who decry the
projected $365 billion federal deficit even as they pour more
and more dollars into their pet programs? Is there a case for
the Keating Five and the way those purblind Senators opened
their doors to convicted savings and loan rip-off artist Charles
Keating -- not to mention the purblind way in which the Senate
ethics committee investigated the offense? Will anyone speak up
for Senators and Representatives who run against Congress back
home but who are all too eager to rejoin the club once they are
safely back inside the Beltway?

    Maybe it takes one to know one. Only a chronic
rubber-check artist, after all, is likely to applaud the
sweetheart deal Congress cut for itself with its own private
bank. And only sophists are likely to go along with the argument
that accepting bundles of money from political-action committees
is not tantamount to taking bribes. Congress's refusal to
consider real reform of its campaign-finance system makes sense
only to other professional politicians, for many of whom
retention of power is the paramount goal.

    "Now just a doggone minute! Point of order!" the florid
gentleperson from Sticksville declaims from the well of the
House. "It's not easy being Congress!" Yes, yes, everyone knows
what a trial it is to make ends meet on $125,100 a year when you
have to maintain two homes and attend a dozen boring receptions
a day. And everyone knows how the folks back home talk out of
both sides of their mouth when it comes to taxes and spending.
(They hate taxes, except those imposed on someone else; and they
hate spending, except when it benefits themselves.) And yes,
only a fool would expect 535 individual politicians to coalesce
into a body capable of national leadership. That is, after all,
what Presidents are for.

    Those arguments are wearing thin in the face of so much
arrogance, so much corruption, so much abuse of the system. In
the 1980s a cowed Congress followed Ronald Reagan down the path
to Reaganomics -- unprecedented growth purchased with
unprecedented deficits. George Bush, after a little trimming
here and there, has charted much the same course. Now the
country is being asked to pay the price. Meanwhile, Congress
remains more concerned with protecting itself and its
prerogatives than with helping solve the nation's manifold
domestic problems.

    But Pogo was right: the enemy is still us. Or as Alexander
Hamilton put it when he defended the concept of a House of
Representatives: "Here, sir, the people govern." If Congress
isn't good enough, neither is whining about it. If voters in a
democracy don't like what they have, the only real solution is
to vote for something -- or someone -- else.