FIXING CONGRESS PT. 1: Compromise, collegiality, and the shift to vitriol

However you view the current state of affairs, whether you think we’re watching the dissolution of human rights and a great democratic republic – or you think America is entering a new Golden Age – either way – there is a lot to learn from those who worked in and around Capitol Hill during a time when compromise was the way of things and elected officials generally liked – or at least respected – each other, regardless of party. In the age of compromise, federal lawmakers shared a commitment to furthering a common American agenda. 

Hello, I’m Rachel Lewis Hilburn.  And I’m about to talk with Michael Johnson, who witnessed that kind of bipartisanship firsthand.  He worked on the Ford White House staff in the 1970s and later served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican leader Bob Michel. After his congressional service, he joined the private sector and worked as a lobbyist. He is co-founder and former board chair of the Congressional Institute.  And he, along with Jerome Climer, is co-author of the book, "Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People."  In the spirit of full disclosure, Michael Johnson is also my second cousin.  And he is not the current Speaker of the House. 

Despite the fact that our political leanings are very different, we agree on the great need for American citizens to put aside vitriol, learn or re-learn some basic civics lessons, and seriously consider how we’d like our own government to function.

In this segment, Michael Johnson and I explore what we can learn from that bygone age of compromise in Washington, D.C.  We look at how and when it started to disappear, and what effect that had on the business of the American people.  

Read the full transcript of this interview here:

Rachel Lewis Hilburn: Well, tell me, when you worked with Bob Michel, there was a spirit of compromise and negotiation in Congress that you talk about in your book. What was that era that is unknown to so many of us now? What was that like?

Michael Johnson: Well, you're making me the Ghost of Congress Past, here. This was primarily during the Reagan years, and there are two strong elements here. One is our culture, our society, both were different. There was a different moral grounding, there was a different relationship and sense of community. There was more religiosity during that time. 

So the outside influences on the process were different. 

And on the internal side, politics just wasn't personal like it is now. There wasn't the kind of name calling and character assassination and vitriol that there is now, not only just in Congress, but in society in general. I'm not sure which one plays off the other, but it has become very pervasive. So that enabled the legislative process to take place when members of Congress kept themselves at a professional level. They were able to get things done when there was still an error of bipartisanship, because off the grid, members of Congress knew each other and were often friends across the aisle. That, too, enabled the process to work and for the Reagan legislative agenda to get enacted. And it was historic in its both Reagan and HW Bush. His first term was historic in terms of what was accomplished policy-wise.

RLH: And you've pointed out in your book Fixing Congress that some of the most consequential legislation of our time, like the Social Security Act of 1935, Medicare, 1965, the Civil Rights Act, 1964, all of those passed with majority support from both parties. And it sounds like that was a hallmark of Bob Michel's kind of MO. According to Roll Call, Roll Call described him as “epitomizing the   Congressional Old School in nearly every way. He prized collegiality, collaboration, civility, and courtesy as essential political virtues.” And they report he was “pushed aside in the 1990s for those very attributes.” So why did that start to change? And is that right that we can peg that to the 1990s?

MJ:  Yeah, pretty much. It really dates back a little farther, going back to Newt Gingrich's election to Congress and the end of the era of Tip O'Neill, a speaker of the house who was a congenial leader, and the advent of Jim Wright of Texas becoming speaker. He was not. He was very, very partisan and I guess, classic, in what you think of as a Texas politician. 

So understand that Republicans had been in the minority in Congress for 40 years. Bob Michel never once served in the majority all the – what – 46 years he served in Congress. 

So there was a hunger there among the younger members on the Republican side to gain the majority. And that to some was more important than actually passing legislation and being in pragmatic bipartisan legislators. 

And Gingrich took a hold of that.  Actually, he created a lot of it, but all good has bad and all bad has good, and that may have been a good goal for Republicans at the time. 

But the bad part was it created a permanent atmosphere of tough, hard, cold politics. Gingrich and Wright just beat the daylights out of each other and so did the two parties. And Jim Wright was eventually deposed from the house, and Newt really didn't last very long as speaker when they took control in 1994 because he was considered a radical and a warrior at the time. And by the time he left Congress, he was mild-mannered compared to the rest.

RLH:  And it seems like the public dialogue has a little bit of a lag in terms of mirroring the dialogue, the vitriolic nature of the dialogue in Congress. But that came along too. 

I mean, we have these two kinds of arenas for vitriol and disrespect and intolerance of other points of view actually – in the workings of Congress on Capitol Hill and then just among regular folks. And so I want to explore both of those ideas. 

But first, can you talk a little bit about some of the shifts in Congress that in addition to Gingrich's new brand of politics, there were other kinds of functional shifts that led to more partisanship, for example, moving power away from committees in the mid 1970s over to party leaders. How did that affect the way Congress works?

MJ: Well, pretty significantly, we have throughout our history had periods where the Executive was much more formidable than the Congress or the Judiciary. And we've had times when Congress was much more formidable than the Executive, than the President.  

In that period of time when bipartisanship was still alive, there was a kind of understanding that the real legislative work began in the committees and came out of the committees because they dealt with issues in a very substantive way. 

And there are so many influences that came to bear on this, but gradually the political process that surrounds the legislative process became a soundbite existence. And the more it was necessary to deal with the national media and create national issues and national division, in order for Republicans to gain control, the real center of gravity for the power in Congress turned to the leadership.

And because you needed a face, the Speaker became that face and became that drive. 

RLH:  Can you talk a little bit about just the Speaker of the House's job and what some of the dangers are of having a very strong speaker of the house, which is actually what we're seeing today?

MJ:  Yeah, except that Tip O'Neill was a powerful speaker of the House because he had majorities in the House of 45 members. I think Mike Johnson has eight. We've just had another recent resignation from the house. So that kind of limits what the Speaker can do in a lot of respects and limits what members of Congress can do, because there's this stalemate where the center of decision-making can really be controlled by a dozen members of Congress or 20 members of Congress rather than the whole body. And those who have control over the House now, and to an extent the Senate, are the extremes of both parties. 

And so many of those in those extreme wings of the parties really don't have the kind of dedication to legislating. They would rather die on their sword than compromise to get something done. They don't have a sense of commonality in the interest of the country over their own ideological purity. So that has taken much of the emphasis away from the committees and away from serious legislating.

RLH: You talk a lot about that in the book – about how party loyalty is rewarded, and that's sort of the way of things, and we will get to more of the reforms that you're proposing. 

But when it comes to just the Speaker of the House, what are your ideas for, perhaps, reforming how that position gets determined?

MJ: Well, you kind of answered your own question because a key to that is restoring the authority and integrity of the committee system so that more legislators have an opportunity to participate in that system, bring amendments to the floor, and really be engaged beyond the rhetorical exploits that they depend upon to get reelected. 

John Boehner, when he was speaker, had a lot of flaws, but he really believed in that. He wanted to weaken the leadership control over things and get it back to where it belongs. And I think that is the key to the speakership. 

And the other thing is that we really need to have in leadership in the speakership individuals who have character and honesty and moral grounding and commitment to national ideals and a national agenda... 

RLH:  Michael Johnson is co-author of Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People.  Join us in segment 2 when we explore the role  and impact of media on politics.  

For Encore, I’m Rachel Lewis Hilburn.