APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter: Extension of Remarks

Vol 24 (January 2001)

War on the Floor 

John J. Pitney, Jr.

             A couple of odd episodes from the 106th Congress may suggest what to expect in the 107th Congress and beyond. 

In June 1999, Representative Billy Tauzin (R-LA) made a motivational videotape for his Republican colleagues.  In the tape, Tauzin stood before an American flag, dressed as General George Patton, and delivered a version of the speech that George C. Scott made famous.  A Tauzin aide explained:  “There's a symbolic significance in the fact that as we head into the 2000 elections, Republicans recognize they're in a political war for control of the House.”[1]

 A couple of months later, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) tried to rally members of the Democratic Caucus to fight for education.  In addition to discussing the merits of the issue, he also showed them a clip from the movie “Braveheart.”  In October 2000, he took the “Braveheart” theme one step farther, arriving at a Caucus session wearing a breastplate, tartan blanket, and face paint. “It's time to pick up the spears!” he shouted.[2]

 The theatrics of Tauzin and Gephardt may have been unusual, but the basic sentiment was not.   In some ways, lawmakers do see congressional politics as a form of combat.  Military and legislative battles are both struggles of opposing human wills, involving strategy, tactics, intelligence, and coordination.  Accordingly, much of Capitol Hill’s vocabulary derives from the military.  Lawmakers try to be good soldiers, except when Young Turks break ranks and overthrow the Old Guard.  Some war-horses let their lieutenants serve as their hatchet-men, while others lead the charge. Leaders on the defensive may adopt a bunker mentality. Their campaign committees gather ammunition, mobilize troops, mount attacks, launch blitzes, take hits, return fire, and beat retreats.  And as all congressional scholars know, of course, the symbol of authority in the House is a mace. 

Congressional politics has always had a military aspect.  In his 1953 book, The Legislative Struggle, Bertram Gross described legislative rules as “the codes of battle” and said that the process could result in “a compromise, an armed truce, a prelude to the next conflict, or, more rarely, an all-out victory for one side.”[3]

 Many different kinds of political warfare unfold on the Hill, but the underlying conflict is the struggle between Republicans and Democrats for majority status.  From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, it was easy to forget this struggle, since the Democrats had such a dominant position in both the House and Senate.  Much of the literature pictured Congress not as a battleground where two partisan armies fought each other, but as a marketplace where 535 individual entrepreneurs dickered with one another.  Scholarly footnotes in legislative studies contained many references to economists, none to Clausewitz or Sun Tzu.

  The GOP’s 1980 takeover of the Senate did little to change this mindset, since it seemed to be a fluke stemming from the chamber’s peculiar seat-vote ratio.  Since the election of 1994, however, we have had a fundamentally different situation.  Republicans have controlled both houses, but their reign has remained in contest.  As Robin Kolodny has explained, parties in the House and Senate have been “pursuing majorities.”[4]  We can no longer try to understand congressional behavior simply as the pursuit of individual goals.  Instead, we must also see how Republicans and Democrats seek the collective goal of majority status.  In this sense, they resemble armies, which try to get their troops to subordinate their narrow self-interest to the good of the whole.  Military theory tells us that leaders must inspire loyalty and unit cohesion, and in that light, the Tauzin and Gephardt performances may not seem so odd after all.

             The results of the 2000 elections indicate that partisan warfare will certainly persist and probably intensify during the 107th Congress.  Control of both chambers is just within the Democrats’ reach, so we can expect them to seize every opportunity to make Republicans look bad.  In the Senate, the war metaphor has a ghoulishly literal tone.  Just as casualties change the course of military conflicts, a single death on the Republican side could give the Democrats a majority.

             From statehouse to White House, the two parties fought to a draw in 2000, suggesting that they stand at rough parity in the electorate.  Though it is hard to forecast elections far in advance – witness the fate of presidential-election models  – it seems likely that neither party will gain an insurmountable advantage in Congress during the next few years.  Therefore, we should expect an ongoing exchange of leadership press conferences, floor speeches, symbolic roll-call votes, and of course, vitriolic fund-raising letters. 

             The bitterness of the presidential election will fuel the hostility.  It is hard enough to lose a battle, but it is especially galling to lose because of perceived trickery or treachery.  The slogan “Remember Pearl Harbor!” is but one example of the thirst for revenge that develops when one side sees itself as the victim of the other side’s perfidy.  In 1985, House Republicans thought they had suffered their own Pearl Harbor when the Democratic majority decided an Indiana election contest in favor of the Democratic incumbent.  Although this one seat had no practical effect on the partisan balance, it still triggered harsh political combat, climaxing in Republican walkout from the chamber.  The lingering GOP anger helped lead to the rise of Newt Gingrich and the fall of Jim Wright and Tony Coelho.[5]

             Fifteen years later, the Bush-Gore contest provoked similar passions on a much wider scale.  Expect many references to that contest in future congressional campaigns, both as a way to vent genuine frustration, and as a means to rally the troops for electoral ground war.

             For legislative scholars, the lesson is clear.  On our bookshelves, we should move aside the works on microeconomic theory and make room for some military field manuals.

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John J. Pitney, Jr. is associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of The Art of Political Warfare (University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).

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