Changing the Rules

Kevin Drum has one of these posts where someone explains that the filibuster rule won’t be changed because it wouldn’t be in place unless the powers that be liked it. And that’s true enough! But it almost proves too much. American politics is very small-c conservative. And on top of that, entrenched interests (of which old codger senators count as one) are by definition powerful. Struggles for reform normally lose. That’s true of both substantive reform and procedural reform. But insofar as people are reading about American politics at all that’s presumably because they aren’t total fatalists.

Which leads me to a point that a couple of friends raised with me at a bar last night. Relatively few progressives seem to recognize that it’s always been the case that major periods of substantive reform go hand-in-hand with episodes of procedural reform. Important substantive reforms, by definition, threaten influential actors in the system. Those actors, not being idiots, seek to exploit procedural elements of the system to frustrate reform. Successful reformers need to find ways to frustrate these tactics of frustration. This piece by Julian Zelizer on the politics of congressional reform (PDF) offers a nice recap of the forgotten battle to reform the House Rules Committee, a struggle that set the stage for the Great Society:

The Rules Committee had become more obstructionist after 1955 when Virginia’s Howard Smith took over the chairmanship. In 1959, the Democratic Study Group–which was formed a year earlier by a group of liberal Democrats who wanted their party to move in a more progressive direction- -targeted the Rules Committee. Although Rayburn had promised DSG that Smith had assured him he would be more accommodating following the large liberal gains in the 1958 congressional elections, after 1959, Rules became more obstructionist. The election of John Kennedy as President in 1960 heightened interest in congressional reform. Liberals insisted that with a sympathetic president, there were enough Democrats and liberal Republicans to pass legislation if institutional rules did not prevent them from doing so. “Stripped of the Senate filibuster and the House Rules Committee veto,” ADA promised, “the conservative coalition will no longer stand as a roadblock to the New Frontier.”

Tensions worsened when Howard Smith bragged to reporters that he would “exercise whatever weapon that I can lay my hands on” to stifle Kennedy. He refused to tolerate “radical, wild-eyed spendthrift proposals that will do the country severe damage.” Rayburn became openly frustrated with Smith. Following the 1960 election, Kennedy met with the Speaker in Florida. While refusing to take a position definitively on legislative procedure, Kennedy implied to Rayburn that he endorsed weakening the Rules Committee. Privately, Kennedy told his closest aide, Lawrence O’Brien, “We can’t lose this one Larry . . . The ball game is over if we do.” The Democratic Study Group–a key part of the liberal coalition–made proposals to reform the Rules Committee.

It’s an important historical episode. Particularly the iterative relationship between the various players. Rayburn doesn’t want reform right up until he does want reform. Kennedy doesn’t take a position until he does take a position. People keep saying that conservatives will become more accommodating if liberals win more elections, but eventually the truth comes out that they’ll become less accommodating—they’re not joking around, they honest-to-God want to block progressive reform and intend to do so. Eventually, things change. But you have to keep working for it.