house recognizes permanent leaders
No accord need exist between Congress and the executive
There may not be such a thing as a party in power, in the European sense, because the party to which the executive belongs may be in a minority in one or both houses of Congress, in which case it cannot do anything which requires fresh legislation; may be in a minority in the Senate, in which case it can take no administrative act of importance.
There is little true leadership in political action, because the most prominent man has no recognized party authority. Congress was not elected to support him. He cannot threaten disobedient followers with a dissolution of Parliament like an English prime minister. He has not even the French president’s right of dissolving the House with the consent of the Senate.
There is often no general and continuous cabinet policy, because the cabinet has no authority over Congress, may perhaps have no influence with it.
There is no general or continuous legislative policy, because the legislature, having no recognized leaders, and no one guiding committee, acts through a large number of committees, independent of one another, and seldom able to bring their measures to maturity. What continuity exists is due to the general acceptance of a few broad maxims, such as that of nonintervention in the affairs of the Old World, and to the fact that a large nation does not frequently or lightly change its views upon leading principles. In minor matters of legislation there is little settled policy, for the houses trifle with questions, take them up in one session and drop them the next, seem insensible to the duty of completing work once begun, and are too apt to yield to the pressure which small sections, or even influential individuals in their constituencies, exert upon them to arrest some measure the public interest demands. Neither is there any security that Congress will attend to such defects in the administrative system of the country as may need a statute to correct them. In Europe the daily experience of the administrative departments discloses faults or omissions in the law which involve needless trouble to officials, needless cost to the treasury, needless injustice to classes of the people. Sometimes for their own sakes, sometimes from that desire to see things well done which is the life-breath of a good public servant, the permanent officials call the attention of their parliamentary chief, the minister, to the defective state of the law, and submit to him the draft of a bill to amend it. He brings in this bill, and if it involves no matter of political controversy (which it rarely does), he gets it passed. As an American minister has no means (except by the favour of a committee) of getting anything he proposes attended to by Congress, it is a mere chance if such amending statutes as these are introduced or pass into law. And it sometimes happens that when he sees the need for an improvement he cannot carry it, becaus selfish interests oppose it, and he has not that command of a majority by means of which a European minister is able to effect reforms.
These defects are all reducible to two. There is an excessive friction in the American system, a waste of force in the strife of various bodies and persons created to check and balance one another. There is a want of executive unity, and therefore a possible want of executive vigour. Power is so much subdivided that it is hard at a given moment to concentrate it for prompt and effective action. In fact, this happens only when a distinct majority of the people are so clearly of one mind that the several coordinate organs of government obey this majority, uniting their efforts to serve its will.
VII. The relations of the people to the legislature are in every free country so much the most refined and delicate, as well as so much the most important part of the whole scheme and doctrine of government, that we must not expect to find perfection anywhere. But comparing America with Great Britain since 1832, the working of the representative system in America seems somewhat inferior.
There are four essentials to the excellence of a representative system:
That the representatives shall be chosen from among the best men of the country, and, if possible, from its natural leaders;
That they shall be strictly and palpably responsible to their constituents for their speeches and votes;
That they shall have courage enough to resist a momentary impulse of their constituents which they think mischievous, i.e., shall be representatives rather than mere delegates;
That they individually, and the chamber they form, shall have a reflex action on the people, i.e., that while they derive authority from the people, they shall also give the people the benefit of the experience they acquire in the chamber, as well as of the superior knowledge and capacity they may be presumed to possess.
Americans declare, and no doubt correctly, that of these four requisites, the first, third, and fourth are not attained in their country. Congressmen are not chosen from among the best citizens. They mostly deem themselves mere delegates. They do not pretend to lead the people, being indeed seldom specially qualified to do so.
That the second requisite, responsibility, is not fully realized seems surprising in a democratic country, and indeed almost inconsistent with that conception of the representative as a delegate, which is supposed, perhaps erroneously, to be characteristic of democracies. Still the fact is there. One cause, already explained, is to be found in the committee system. Another is the want of organized leadership in Congress. In Europe, a member’s responsibility usually takes the form of his being bound to support the leader of his party on all important divisions. In America, this obligation attaches only when the party has “gone into caucus,” and there resolved upon its course. Not having the right to direct, the leader cannot be held responsible for the action of the rank and file. As a third cause we may note the fact that owing to the restricted competence of Congress many of the questions which chiefly interest the voter do not come before Congress at all, so that its proceedings are not followed with that close and keen attention which the debates and divisions of European chambers excite, and some may think that a fourth cause is found in the method by which candidates for membership of Congress are selected. That method is described in later chapters (see Chapters 59–66 post). Its effect has been to make congressmen (including senators) be, and feel themselves to be, the nominees of the party organizations rather than of the citizens, and thus it has interposed what may for some purposes be called a sort of nonconducting medium between the people and their representatives.
In general the reciprocal action and reaction between the electors and Congress, what is commonly called the “touch” of the people with their agents, is not sufficiently close, quick, and delicate. Representatives ought to give light and leading to the people, just as the people give stimulus and momentum to their representatives. This incidental merit of the parliamentary system is among its greatest merits. But in America the action of the voter fails to tell upon Congress. He votes for a candidate of his own party, but he does not convey to that candidate an impulse towards the carrying of particular measures, because the candidate when in Congress will be practically unable to promote those measures, unless he happens to be placed on the committee to which they are referred. Hence the citizen, when he casts his ballot, can seldom feel that he is advancing any measure or policy, except the vague and general policy indicated in his party platform. He is voting for a party, but he does not know what the party will do, and for a man, but a man whom chance may deprive of the opportunity of advocating the measures he cares most for.
Conversely, Congress does not guide and illuminate its constituents. It is amorphous, and has little initiative. It does not focus the light of the nation, does not warm its imagination, does not dramatize principles in the deeds and characters of men.4 This happens because, in ordinary times, it lacks great leaders, and the most obvious cause why it lacks them, is its disconnection from the executive. As it is often devoid of such men, so neither does the country habitually come to it to look for them. In the old days, neither Hamilton, nor Jefferson, nor John Adams, in our own time, neither Stanton, nor Grant, nor Tilden, nor Cleveland, ever sat in
