“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”
— James Madison1
“American politics isn’t a one-man show. It’s a sport. And its arena is Congress.”
— attributed to Henry Clay2
Like all normal people, I dream of Whigs. Well, not Whigs exactly. But legislatures, parliaments, assemblies, congresses – the nuts and bolts of self-government so central to good old-fashioned Whiggery. I love all of it – the spectacle of floor debates, the hauling in of bureaucrats to get grilled at oversight hearings, the logrolling and horse-trading, the wheeling, the dealing. The battle of ideas! The literal making of law! It’s all great stuff.
Sadly, there aren’t too many Whigs about these days. Instead of law, we are enthralled by power. It is an age of imperial presidents and shameless autocrats. People want results, and they want them quick, no matter the means. It’s everything the Framers of the Constitution feared, frankly.
In my dreams, a new Whig(ish) party would emerge to challenge this abysmal status quo. A party dedicated to pushing back against executive power. A party that believes in democratic self-government and republican virtues. If we are to avoid dictatorship, we need a party for Congress.
Disclaiming the Presidency
The original English Whigs came to prominence by opposing absolute monarchy and committing themselves to the ideas of parliamentary sovereignty and legislative supremacy. American Whigs have similar anti-executive origins, forming primarily as a response to Andrew Jackson’s populist presidentialism. American Whigs were themselves hilariously bad at picking presidents, and only succeeded by nominating old war heroes (both of whom dropped dead before finishing their first terms). The modern Whig party of my imagining would fully disavow the presidency (never fielding any candidates for the office) and commit themselves to being solely a congressional party.
A not insignificant factor in congressional dysfunction is the extent to which Members of Congress see their offices as mere stepping stones to something greater. Members want to become Senators; Senators want to become presidents. These ambitions make them loathe to put in the necessary effort to make their jobs more meaningful and relevant. And so they bide their time, letting the institution slide into irrelevance, and doing everything they can to avoid having to vote on anything (or even stay in D.C. for more than 3 days a week).
Modern Whigs should simply disavow the presidency altogether. Their ambitions would thus be fully contained within the institution of Congress. They would be incentivized to support and defend that institution, making it more powerful and a more potent check on the president. They would understand that in order to achieve this, it would be necessary to become institutionalists – more team players than lone wolves trying to beef up personal “brands” in order to take a shot at the Oval Office. If Congress is the be-all and end-all of their political careers, they would find it vital to ensure that Congress facilitates meaningful deliberation and can exercise actual power.
Offices and Officeholders
The modern Congress has become almost completely de-institutionalized. It is composed of, essentially, 535 independent contractors who must staff up their own offices. Few feel any particular responsibility to secure good legislative outcomes, and most feel powerless to make any real difference. Members and Senators have (some) opportunities to pursue their own legislative agendas, but they have basically no duties in that regard. They can skip any committee meeting or hearing they like. There’s no requirement to vote on the House or Senate floors. Most fly in on Monday and fly out on Friday, spending more time in their districts and home states than undertaking the work they were elected to perform.
The modern Whigs of my imagining would reconceptualize their offices and consider themselves, fundamentally, officeholders. They would separate the individual from the office. In the vast flowchart of Congress, there would be 535 boxes, labeled things like “The third congressional district of Iowa” or “The junior Senator from Maryland”. Individual humans would fill these boxes, of course, but they would know that they are merely temporary occupants of those offices – with a duty to hold them for a time and then pass them on (intact) to their successors.
The re-institutionalization of Congress would involve defining many more such boxes. “The Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture”, “the ranking minority member of the Tariff Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee”, etc. etc. Each of these positions would come with pre-defined responsibilities and duties to move specific legislation through the system. Members and Senators would naturally compete for the more powerful positions, but with the knowledge that gaining such a position incurs corresponding obligations to fulfil its proper function. Power must be joined to accountability.
Congressional Capacity
For Congress to be an effective check against the presidency, it needs the resources to put up a fight. Part of the de-institutionalization of Congress over the last 30 years has been the slow but steady de-funding of congressional operations. Staff across the board have been pared back to absurdly minimal levels. The pay is bad and policy “experts” are likely to be 25-year-olds with virtually no real world experience. At the start of the Internet age, Gingrich eliminated Congress’s independent technology office and no one’s ever put it back. There is no one in Congress able to go toe-to-toe with either the bureaucrats that run executive branch agencies or the lobbyists that swarm Capitol Hill. They are simply outmatched.
Modern Whigs would have a clear incentive to reverse these trends. They would expand all areas of congressional operations. Committees would be supported by a cadre of well-paid, experienced policy experts who could competently advise Members and Senators on every possible policy question. Staff for subcommittees would likewise be expanded, as would other bastions of independent knowledge, such as the Congressional Research Service and a new Office of Technology Assessment. This collection of support roles would be a permanent fixture of the new Whig Congress – advising Members and Senators year after year, maintaining continuity and retaining institutional knowledge. This robust legislative infrastructure would allow Congress to resume its rightful place as the preeminent authority in our republic.
Congressional Procedure
Finally, as a purely congressional party, these new Whigs would have every incentive to decentralize and democratize congressional proceedings. The modern Congress is incredibly centralized, even among the famously independent-minded Senators. Major decisions are negotiated among a handful of individuals, in secret, and then thrust upon the House and Senate as a fait accompli. Instead of making individual decisions about healthcare, energy, taxes, immigration, etc., there are typically just one or two “omnibus” bills that fund the entire government and address every possible policy area. Voting is now primarily the act of ratifying what your party leaders have been able to negotiate outside of Congress.
Members and Senators largely accept this as a natural and good way of doing business. It leaves them with more time and energy for campaigning, the difficult decisions and trade-offs are left to others, and they get to righteously complain about being kept out of “the room where it happens.” Best of all, they avoid any “tough votes” on any specific issue and thus their constituents have no voting record with which to hold them accountable. With no power comes no responsibility.
My imagined Whigs wouldn’t shy away from their responsibilities in this way, and they would work to ensure these duties cannot be ignored. As part of the re-institutionalization of Congress, legislative processes would be thoroughly re-engineered to provide the kind of regular, thorough deliberative process that the Founders intended. The legislative process would develop its own momentum, in contrast to the ad hoc lawmaking we see today. Bills would move through the system in the traditional “Schoolhouse Rocks” way – initial drafting and deliberation by a subcommittee, extensive vetting by the full committee, free and open debate on the floor, conferences with the other House to resolve differences. Power would be decentralized as Members and Senators would have many more opportunities to shape legislation as it worked its way through the regular order.
A Path Forward
The bad news, of course, is that these imagined Whigs of mine don’t exist, and aren’t likely to exist any time soon. The good news, however, is that we don’t actually need them. All we need is for the current Members and Senators in Congress to act like Whigs. And ultimately, all that means is for them to take their jobs as lawmakers seriously. They may be partisans with specific policy preferences and fixed ideologies. But they are also members of an institution with duties and obligations to that institution. It’s long past the time for them to fulfil those duties and obligations. Congress needs to get back to work.
Fixing Congress is not an easy task, but there are plausible paths forward. I sketch one option here. Congresspersons aren’t going to abandon their party allegiances, but they could join an informal Whig Caucus to develop ideas for re-institutionalizing the legislative branch. And Congress has a history of undertaking this kind of reform about once every generation. One effort led to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, another to the far-reaching reforms of the 1970s. But the last major overhaul occurred in the mid-1990s and Congress has been drifting ever since.
If Congress does not get its act together, it will be swept away by executive power. If the President can freeze funds despite legal obligations to disburse them, or spend money without congressional authorization, Congress will have lost its primary power under the Constitution. At that point, the constitutional system created by the Founders will have been effectively destroyed. We need a party to defend the Constitution and to defend Congress.
We need Whigs!