Thoughts On A Quiet Friday

Each night since Tuesday, I've watched the House of Representatives debate H. Con. Res. 63. If I'm around Saturday, I'll watch the other house attempt to take up the same debate.

This is the resolution that makes official Congress' disapproval of the president's plan to increase the troop level by 21,500.

I've followed the debate with several thoughts:

1) The fact that lawmakers who find the war in Iraq (the concurrent resolution doesn't mention Afghanistan) so immoral and unnecessary, so void of substance and leadership, so wasteful of resources that could otherwise be used domestically, and so diametrically opposite its declared mission that the best they can do is pass verbiage that has no force of law is beyond me. I also like the provision for one motion to recommit without instructions; that was a nice touch.

2) Concurrent Resolutions are sometimes constitutionally necessary but generally useless. Going on record without creating a record is like shouting in a canyon. It creates a lot of noise but the only one hearing it is the one doing the yelling.

To show the gravity of the resolution to passed, one only has to look at other concurrent resolutions and their subject matter. The preceding resolution, H. Con. Res. 62, voices and affirms the Congress' support of National Children and Families Day, which is the 4th Saturday of June.

Maybe the phrase "generally useless" is not strong enough.

3) It's often said that the most dangerous place is between an elected official and a camera. Still, I'm a huge defender of using C-SPAN cameras to stay in contact with district voters; it's the cost of a representative republic.

Since I'm watching late at night in Eastern time, I also understand I'm watching the congressional equivalent of the 7,8, and 9 hitters. The high-profile speakers have expended their allotted five minutes to correspond with their district's media deadlines and I'm fine with that.

Still, I'm stunned at the lack of coherent and eloquent arguments; I'm embarrassed at how many speakers on both sides of the aisle seemingly read their speech for the first time on the floor, rarely looking up, and even rarer, enunciating key phrases of key sentence.

I'm not looking for an equivalant to Henry Clay. I'm looking for somebody to speak with minimal passion, reason, and eloquence; I'm finding robotic talking points.

As much as I love parlaimentary procedure, one should not fully rely on unanimous consent to revise and extend to make their argument for them.

4) Each decade has its own unique balance of power. In the Seventies, Congress dominated the other two branches. In the Eighties, power, assumed and de facto, moved to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The Nineties - I'd argue that the White House and Congress checked each other out of power to the benefit of the Rehnquist Court.

This decade will probably end up with the Congress taking back the lead in shaping public debate, but with different institutional results. The Senate has shown itself to be a high school debate club where invoking cloture is getting harder and harder; on the other side, however, the Speaker has monopolized power like none since Carl Albert - but at the expense of the Majority Leader. I'm not sure that's wise.