WASHINGTON — When President Bush appealed to leaders of Congress last week for a show of bipartisanship to end the prospect of gridlock on major bills, he likely was wasting his breath. That, at least, is the clear message from three scholars who have assessed the situation.
All of them operate on the assumption that legislators will behave in a way that makes political sense for them and their parties, and they agree that conditions on Capitol Hill are hostile to Bush’s plea.
In a paper presented at the recent Boston convention of the American Political Science Association, Peter Trubowitz and Nicole Mellow of the University of Texas-Austin said that bipartisanship occurs only rarely and briefly under special circumstances, and those circumstances just don’t exist today.
At the same meeting, Sarah A. Binder of the Brookings Institution and George Washington University said the evidence shows that while gridlock may be damaging to the reputation of Congress, individual lawmakers are not punished by their voters for the failings of the institution and thus have little incentive to worry about such matters.
The Texas pair began by noting that partisanship is the natural condition of Congress, because its members "need the support of key constituencies (partisans) to get re-elected, (so) they tend to avoid taking policy positions that might antagonize party activists, campaign contributors and core supporters. … Because these groups have intense policy pr eferences, lawmakers are reluctant to reach across the aisle and vote for policy positions their partisans might deem too ‘soft’ or ‘weak.’"
That’s the general rule, Trubowitz and Mellow say, but there have been times in the past century where bipartisanship has emerged. Those times are "most likely to occur when the political parties are competitive and regionally dispersed, and when the national economy is growing."
Nationally, Republicans and Democrats are closely balanced, but, as many have noted, redistricting this past year protected so many incumbents that no more than 40 of the 435 House seats are really competitive. The country is sharply divided regionally — remember the red and blue states in 2000 — with each party dominant in its own geographical base. And the national economy, far from growing, has been mired for more than a year in job-sapping doldrums.
"During hard times," they say, "lawmakers will strongly advocate partisan positions (and) be less preoccupied with appealing to ‘swing’ voters and more concerned about shoring up their political base." Thus, their conclusion: "Given the tenuous balance of the two parties in the national government and the closeness of the 2000 election, the president’s overtures to bipartisanship are understandable. However, the parties are increasingly regionally polarized, the economy is stumbling in ways that highlight class differences, and a quick resolution to the war on terrorism is nowhere in sight. If the past is a predictor for the future, these are tough odds that the president faces. In all likelihood, finding a new bipartisan consensus will remain elusive."
But shouldn’t members of Congress worry about going home to face the voters with no Medicare prescription drug benefit, no patients’ bill of rights, no increase in the minimum wage and no real answers to budget deficits and a lagging economy?
The short answer, professor Binder says, is no.
"Poor legislative performance by Congress, in other words, is unlikely to affect candidates’ electoral fortunes. Voters might be turned off by legislative inaction, but are unlikely to hold incumbents’ performance against them in the voting booth."
Individual members of Congress are valued for their constituent services, their presence at local events and their ability to bring specific projects to their districts — and most face negligible, underfinanced opposition.
Binder finds no significant relationship between the degree of gridlock in Congress and the electoral fate of Congress as a whole or of its majority party.
The reputation of Congress as an institution does go down when gridlock surges, she says, and there is statistical evidence that gridlock may impel an increase in the number of members who retire voluntarily from office. But it just doesn’t hurt at election time.
Thus, "the dilemma of gridlock: Despite the harm frequent stalemate does to institutional reputations, there is little electoral incentive for legislators to address it."
The president can exhort all he wishes, these observers say, but he is not likely to produce bipartisanship or avoid gridlock. Sorry about that.
David Broder can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200.
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