Parsing "Partisanism"

Jeff Alworth

The Oregonian has a front-page story today emblazoned with the title: "Oregonians in Congress: not so independent."  A crack team of Oregonian analysts pored through votes cast and found that the mostly-Democratic delegation almost always voted with their party:

The analysis of nearly 2,000 total votes by Oregon's seven members of Congress excluded ceremonial and routine procedural votes, considering only decisions in which at least 20 percent of members voted in the minority. While Oregon's representatives and senators break with parties somewhat more than colleagues in other parts of the nation, their votes have largely been along party lines.

Partisan voting by the delegation is a sign of the national partisanship that has marked Congress in recent years. Democrats campaigned against that rancor and have promised cooperation in their takeover this year, though opinions differ on how likely that is. The voting analysis shows bipartisanship would be a significant shift....

The polarization is especially significant in Oregon, which elected two of the Senate's best-known mavericks: Democrat Wayne Morse and Republican Mark O. Hatfield.

This is sloppy journalism.  I have no doubt these numbers are accurate, but they exist in a critical context that the paper ignored.  Under Tom DeLay, House rules were "streamlined" to eliminate pesky interference from the opposition: Dems are not invited to committees where legislation is drafted and are not allowed to introduce legislative alternatives. Amendments are shot down by majority vote. Laws get made behind closed doors, by Republicans, without oversight. 

Although things were a bit more open in the Senate, when legislation from that body went to conference committee--the meetings between the House and Senate where different versions of bills are reconciled before final passage--Dems were barred from participation. Worse, in a revolutionary practice, Tom DeLay began actually drafting legislation entirely in conference committees. 

Democrats, particularly in the house, were essentially locked out of the process of governance.  They were offered a single vote, up or down, on legislation over which they had been allowed no input. Is it any real shocker that they tended to vote as a bloc? 

But The Oregonian doesn't stop there.  They then draw a contrast between Oregon's current legislators and those of our golden past:

The polarization is especially significant in Oregon, which elected two of the Senate's best-known mavericks: Democrat Wayne Morse and Republican Mark O. Hatfield.

In 1996, Hatfield's last year in office, he voted with then-Republican leader Trent Lott on just 55 percent of key votes.

What allowed Hatfield and Morse to be successful mavericks?  For one, they were senators.  They represented entire states, not just homogenized districts, and the structure of the senate tends to slow the movement of radical winds.  But more obviously, during most of their service in the Senate, it was controlled by Democrats. 

The Oregonian devoted a lot of time and a thousand words to this exploration of partisanship in the 109th Congress.  One of the key ways in which partisanship is allowed to flourish is by the rules the leaders adopt about how they'll conduct business.  The last Congress was notable for its partisanship, but far more for the way it was (mis)managed by the Repbulican majority.  They should have mentioned what distinguished that Congress from earlier eras.  It's disingenuous to blame the Oregon delegation for their failure to be independent; with the Hammer in power, they weren't allowed to.

By Jeff Alworth Jan. 09, 2007