“Congress has become the “broken branch” of government, marked by extreme partisanship and few achievements.”
Cato Institute – January 2011
A friend recently lamented about frustrations his daughter was having in planning her daughter’s wedding. Chief among the challenges was where people would sit at the reception. “Obviously, so-and-so can’t be at the same table with Mr. & Mrs. X” or “The Smiths must sit with the Jones.”
This took me back many years to arranging our children’s rehearsal dinner and wedding reception seating arrangements. My solution (which fell on deaf ears) was to have each couple pick a table number from a hat and then sit with whoever else picked the same table number … as the event was supposed to be a celebration for the newlyweds and guests needed to “suck it up” and act as adults for the few hours of service and festivities.
Fast forward to the past several years as my wife and I have been visiting state capitols around the country (20 so far). In variably, while House and Senate chambers all have a center aisle with chairs and desks removed from the minority party’s side and crowded into the majority party’s side of the aisle … typically the “right” side of the room for Republicans and the “left” for Democrats. The lone exception is West Virginia where seats are not moved and any overflow of the majority party sits as a bloc on the minority party’s side.
In Washington, other than the post-9-11 Presidential speech before a joint session of both Houses of Congress when Representatives and Senators were not seated by party to visually demonstrate national unity, Congress has acted no differently than the States … Republicans and Democrats seated and increasingly divided by far more than an aisle!
This political apartheid of our elected representatives is one of many disincentives for members of the House and Senate to forge friendly, working relationships with their peers in the other party. The Leadership of both parties (who command far too much power and influence over their respective chambers … a subject for another piece) actively endorse this practice as another means of fanning the flames of party sectarianism.
In the years since President Reagan played poker with Speaker “Tip” O’Neill, successive Administrations have inexorably exacerbated this situation by failing to reach out to and build personal bridges with members of Congress.
One wonders whether Congress might operate far more effectively and productively if the social and business intercourse between its members in both the House and Senate was encouraged rather than inhibited.
Perhaps, beginning with this fall’s post-election lame-duck session and then continuing into the next session of Congress in 2015, Representatives and Senators should be seated randomly in their respective chambers … with such seating being changed on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.
Members might just discover their Republican colleague is a dedicated and decent person with a social conscience after all, rather than a “right-wing nutcase” … and that the Democrat in the adjacent seat shared many similar concerns about national defense, immigration and fiscal responsibility and was not a “big government socialist”.
The Leadership of both parties might periodically help end the Beltway gridlock by meeting with and soliciting ideas from the other party’s caucuses.
Finally, the President should make a concerted and good-faith effort get to know all members of Congress, perhaps most importantly with those with differing political philosophies and agendas.
By getting to know each other on a personal basis, our elected representatives might discover that compromise can be a viable option to solving many of the nation’s most challenging and vexing problems.
“Pie in the Sky” … perhaps!
However, unless and until the present Party-First mentality which currently dominates our political landscape is replaced by commitments by our elected representatives to put what’s in the real best interests their constituents, in particular, as well as the broader American population, as their number one priority, our government will continue to bicker over trivial issues, substitute short-term Band-Aids for meaningful long-term solutions to issues with potentially enormous financial and other ramifications to our nation and ignore their sworn Constitutional obligations, responsibilities and limitations.
