Missing mandate - Congressional politics

National Review, March 10, 1989

THE AIR is still scented with the odor of burnt rubber, left by the U-turn Congress made after the popular reaction to its plan to raise its own and other Federal Government salaries became manifest. The incident has been treated as a discrete episode: a barbaric yawp, before which Congress retreated guiltily or cravenly. It was grotesque, almost comic. It also won't happen again. Business as usual, in this view, resumes immediately.

No doubt it will. But the pay-raise dust-up tells us some important things about the way Washington's business is usually conducted. For starters, it underlines, once again, the distinction between public opinion and popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what everyone thinks. Public opinion is what everyone thinks he ought to think. Public opinion was firmly on the side of the pay raise. A bipartisan commission came up with the idea. Lloyd Cutler, that generic Establishment worthy, proferred it to Congress. The enlightened press editorialized for it. The only people who didn't like it were the owners of all those tea bags.

Congress, interestingly, found itself on the unpopular side of this divide. Congressmen, after all-representatives even more than senators-are supposed to arise from communities, and be in touch with their opinions. "Communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments," was how Madison put it. Think again, James. This crowd is as in touch as the inventors of New Coke.

What then becomes of that congressional mandate of which we have heard so much? That countergovernment, run by George Mitchell and Jim Wright, which will humanize the Bush Administration, and to which, if he is a prudent man, he will defer? If a mandate is conferred by vibrating to the general will, then on the evidence no congressional mandate exists. Anybody's opinion of what the. people think is as good as these guys'.

A representative system does not run on such principles. Mandates arise when opposing candidates disagree on an issue or a program, and their disagreement is central to the fight between them. In this sense, George Bush might be said to have a mandate not to raise taxes. Congress as a whole has no mandate for anything, especially not this Congress. The Democratic House and Senate candidates proposed no plan for the country, gave no statement of their intentions ahead of time. The closest thing to a Democratic Party agenda, the platform passed in Atlanta, was praised-by its drafters-for its evasiveness.

Even where mandates exist, of course, they can be modified by struggle-by politics. Elections settle, for two-year stretches, the players. They do not inalterably fix the terms of debate: The Democrats and their cheerleaders in the press, knowing this, will be trying to nudge the Bush Administration in their direction: more taxes, more spending, no SDI, Central American Munichs. George Bush should be heartened in his resistance. The emperors are naked.